Economics Trivia

15.6.10


"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst -- and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us."
- Herbert Hoover, President of the United States, May 1, 1930

...by May or June the spring recovery forecast in our letters of last December and November should clearly be apparent..."
- HES May 17, 1930

"Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over."
- Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930

"... irregular and conflicting movements of business should soon give way to a sustained recovery..."
- HES June 28, 1930

"... the present depression has about spent its force..."
- HES, Aug 30, 1930

"We are now near the end of the declining phase of the depression."
- HES Nov 15, 1930

"Stabilization at [present] levels is clearly possible."
- HES Oct 31, 1931

"All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S."
- President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933

Japan's new prime minister warned Friday that his country could face a financial mess like the one that has crippled Greece if it did not deal urgently with its swelling national debt.

While Japan is on firmer financial footing than Greece because most of its debt is held domestically, Prime Minister Naoto Kan's blunt talk appeared designed to push forward his agenda, which may involve raising taxes.

Speaking in his first address to Parliament after taking office Tuesday, Kan said Japan, the world's second-largest economy, cannot continue to let government debt swell while state finances are under pressure from an aging and declining population.

"It is difficult to sustain a policy that relies too heavily on issuing debt. As we have seen with the financial confusion in the European community stemming from Greece, our finances could collapse if trust in national bonds is lost and growing national debt is left alone," he said.

Japan has the largest public debt among industrialized nations at 218.6 percent of its gross domestic product in 2009, according to the International Monetary Fund.