Emergency Measures Quotes

I think Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner shared the view that they shouldn't be in the business of bailouts, but you know, you're not in the business of bailouts until you frankly think you need to be.

Political void should never be allowed to happen at a time of national crisis.

If I were the treasury secretary or head of the Fed, you know, I would try to scare the hell the out of the private sector and say, you better save this because you're going down with the ship.

There is a well-established conviction that the central banks always do what is necessary to keep the system going and then afterwards you then take care of the legal aspects. In a crisis, you simply do not have time to think about such concerns for too long.

The single head may be sick. Who is to conduct the public affairs in that case? When he dies, who are to conduct until a new election?

If the national security is involved, anything goes. There are no rules.

Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.

History has shown that Big Government expands quickest in the immediate aftermath of a crisis - real or manufactured.

Sistema is a deep-seated facet of the Russian culture that goes beyond politics and ideology, and it will exist long after Puitin's ruke has ended. Sistema combines the idea that the state should enjoy unlimited access to all national resources, public and provate, with a kind of state of emergency in which every level of society --businesses, social and ethnic groups, powerful clans and even criminal gangs--is drafted into solving what the Kremlin labels "Urgent State Problems".

There is nothing new about the sudden enthusiasm for aggressive government intervention during a health crisis. Throughout history, pandemics have led to an expansion of the power of the state.

Many think it is not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences laws or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principals, to accommodate it.

Overreaction is one of the things that congress specializes in. I can't think of anything congress does better than overreact.

All that can be done is to play for time to save the country from further shocks that might destroy it entirely.

Military tribunals to lock people up the way Lincoln did.

When something goes wrong, the natural tendency is to say, "By God, we need to pass a law and do something."

What are our priorities? First, the welfare, the survival of the people. Then, democratic norms and processes which from time to time we have to suspend.

I have conferred with the superintendent of police this morning and I gave him instructions that an order be issued by him immediately and under his signature to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand.

We'd all survive if Twitter shut down for a short while during major riots. Social media isn't any more important than a train station, a road or a bus service. We don't worry about police temporarily closing those. Common sense. If riot info and fear is spreading by Facebook and Twitter, shut them off for an hour or two, then restore.

If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.

When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently.

The laboratory where we stored all our negatives went bankrupt overnight following the Asian economic crisis in 1997. So, on short notice, we had to retrieve all the materials in the middle of the night before the debtor-receiver took over the laboratory the next morning.

There were good-faith reasons to resort to extraordinary measures when confronting an unknown global pandemic. Most of us consented to the lockdown, even if reluctantly. However, that consent - freely given as an act of social solidarity - was not intended as a green light to giving up hard-won liberties, or a perpetual suspension of free society.

If at first you don't succeed, Call an airstrike.

Let’s have a moratorium on press conferences …. Get off your asses and let’s do something and fix the biggest doggone crisis in the history of this country.

In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, I sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L Johnson urging him to waive regulations to allow for the early sale of winter grade fuel to help with gasoline shortages and gasoline prices.