Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.
Paul KrugmanRead
Close the weak banks and impose serious capital requirements on the strong ones...You see, it may sound hard-hearted, but you cannot keep unsound financial institutions operating simply because they provide jobs.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Financial institutions must be sound and sustainable; prioritizing jobs over financial stability is dangerous.
Paul Krugman emphasizes the need for a strong financial system, suggesting that weak banks should be shut down and stronger ones should have stricter capital requirements. He argues that maintaining unsound institutions solely to protect jobs is not a viable solution, as it jeopardizes the overall health of the economy.
Themes
Financial StabilityStrong BanksCapital RequirementsEconomic HealthUnsound Institutions
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on economic policy, this quote can highlight the importance of sound financial systems.
More from Paul Krugman
All quotes →Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader.
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It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.
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The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.
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