Economic Crisis Quotes

“13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.”
― Lemony Snicket

“Oil may run out, liquidity may dry up, but as long as ink flows freely, the next chapter of Life will continue to be written.”
― Alex Morritt, Impromptu Scribe

“The general economic growth of the quarter of a century that followed World War II not surprisingly created many illusions. In the West, people thought that they had found in Keynesianism the definitive solution to the problem of crises and unemployment. It was thus thought that the world had entered into an era of perpetual prosperity and definitive mastery of the business cycle. In the socialist world, it was also thought that the model formula for even higher growth had been discovered which enabled Khruschev to announce victoriously that by 1980 the USSR would have overtaken the united States "in every domain." In the third world of Africa and Asia, the national liberation movements which had seized political independence, also had a battery of prescriptions which, in a mix of capitalist and socialist recipes, in doses that varied from case to case, would enable these movements to overcome "underdevelopment" in "interdependence.”
― Samir Amin

“You know, Tsitsi, you are so quick to point out that you are not a prostitute. I just want to laugh because you are just falling into rank. You all should spare us your ‘morality’ that lauds ‘women’ over the supposedly lesser ‘whores’ and ‘girls’. That’s how society sees us. That’s how you see us. You want it to be that we are like coal, only to be loved in the dark and tossed like ashes come morning.”
― Panashe Chigumadzi, Sweet Medicine

“Centralized blockchain can be a great boon to the society, especially in the developing parts of the world, whereas decentralized blockchain will only cause chaos and destruction.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gospel of Technology

“Incorporating cryptocurrency in the traditional centralized financial system not only speeds up transactions exponentially, but also it makes the system more user-friendly, whereas in a decentralized system cryptocurrency will only breed insecurity and chaos, due to the utter absence of liability.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gospel of Technology

“A pandemic will lead to permanent social, economic, and cultural changes. The key is to create good from a bad situation.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“Isabel, remember we used to talk about a honeymoon in Spain?"
"Of course."
"It woulda been a blast. I took a walk last night. Two in the morning, it felt like two in the afternoon. Traffic. People on the street: families, old folks on benches. The bars and restaurants were full, everybody carrying on. Hard to believe there's an economic crisis."
"Maybe they should shut up, get some sleep, and fix the mess.”
― Sebastian Rotella, The Convert's Song

“She was still not at ease with the idea that she was now important enough to have people as accessories. Nor was she comfortable with the idea of these people as gatekeepers with access to the details of their personal lives. Whenever she felt herself shrinking under the indifferent glare of the staff that surrounded her, as she did in this instance, she straightened her back and lifted her chin in the way that Chiedza, her trusted advisor-friend, had instructed her to do.”
― Panashe Chigumadzi

“. It is important that we note the weaknesses in our financial system, and work toward implementing solutions before the next crisis comes. Gordon L. Eade”
― Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel

“They had become a nation of traders.”
― Petina Gappah, An Elegy for Easterly: Stories

“Mankind does not reflect upon questions of economic and social organization until compelled to do so by the sharp pressure of some practical emergency.”
― R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

“Temperatures, petrol prices, the price of the dollar: the golden triangle of our summer. These are facts beyond our control and all we hope now is to see them all rising indefinitely. Sometimes the figures are mixed up in a prophetic confusion, as in 1980 in the US deserts. There, the price per gallon: 51.18, 51.20, 51 .25, varied from one place to another as an exact reflection of the temperature graphs: 100, 110 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. With the question of confidence always lurking just beneath the surface: what price would you accept petrol rising to? What point do you think the dollar could go up to (with the implication: before causing a crash in world economies)? What record level can the heat reach (before causing a volatilization of energy and the beginnings of a worldwide insomnia)? Our artificial destiny is written in these asymptotic curves.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“Sonnet of Cryptocurrency

The reason people are nuts about cryptocurrency,
Is that they hear the magic phrase regulation-free.
But what they forget to take into account,
Is that it also means the user alone bears liability.
The purpose behind a centralized system,
Is not exploitation but to provide trust and stability.
Anything that is decentralized on the other hand,
Is a breeding ground for fraud and volatility.
Not every fancy innovation is gonna benefit society,
Innovation without accountability is only delusion.
Cryptocurrency can be a great boon to banking,
If it merges with the centralized financial institution.
Intoxication of tech is yet another fundamentalism.
Algorithm without humanity is digital barbarism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“You can’t fight an evil disease with sweet medicine,’ says the ng’anga.”
― Panashe Chigumadzi

“In an economy that is overleveraged to historic proportions, economic stimuli will not do the trick.”
― Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel

“The warning signs had been there since the crash of 2008, but after the initial shock, nothing had been done to correct the problem. Banks had been trading over $7 trillion in risky derivatives daily, as well as fixing interest rates and making bets on the rigged games. There was an ever-growing gap between the elite and all the rest of the people which had continued to develop even after the 2008 crash.”
― Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel

“„Mit der Zeit reifen Momente zu etwas heran, erst dann kristallisiert sich heraus, das war es, das Glück.”
― Kristine Bilkau, Die Glücklichen

“The money you own is not yours to abuse, it’s an active part of the global economic vehicle, which means, even a slight abuse on your part will lead the vehicle to malfunction, so use as little as possible based on your actual needs and give the rest back into the society in whichever way you see fit.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ain't Enough to Look Human

“The stock market crash finds a continuation in the takeover frenzy. It is no longer stocks and shares being bought, but companies being bought up. A virtual effervescence is created, with a potential impact on economic restructuring which, in spite of what is said, is purely speculative. The hope is that this enforced circulation will produce a broker's commission — exactly as on the Stock Exchange . Not even an objective profit exactly: the profit from speculation is not exactly surplus value, and what is at stake here is certainly not what is at stake in classical capitalism.
Speculation, like poker or roulette, has its own runaway logic, a chainreaction logic, a process of intensification [Steigerung], in which the thrill of the game and of bidding up the stakes plays a considerable role. This is why there is no point criticizing it on the basis of economic logic (this is what makes these phenomena so exciting: the economic being overtaken by a random, vertiginous form).
The game is such as to become suicidal: big companies end up buying back their own shares, which is nonsensical from the economic point of view: they end up mounting takeover bids for themselves! But this is all part of the same madness. In the case of takeovers, companies are not traded - do not circulate - as real capital, as units of production; they are traded as a quantity of shares, as a mere probability of production , which is enough to create a virtual movement within the economy.
That this will be a prelude to other crashes is highly probable, for the same reasons as apply in the case of stocks and shares: things are circulating too quickly. We might imagine labour itself - labour power — moving into this speculative orbit too. The worker would no longer sell his labour power for a wage, as in the classic capitalist process, but sell his job itself, his employment. And he would buy others and sell them on again, as their stock went up or down on the Labour Exchange (the term would then assume its full meaning). It would not be so much a question of doing the jobs as keeping them circulating, creating a virtual movement of employment which substituted for the real movement of labour.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Screened Out

“Trying to build a disparity-free economy pursuing revenue is like trying to achieve pregnancy through vasectomy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting

“So long as greed drives the economy, it's not economy, but catastrophe.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting

“Himalayan Sonneteer Sonnet 81

If we treat people,
Like we treat currency,
That is the end of the world,
That is the end of society.
Currency is a social construct,
So, its value varies based on geography.
Humanity is the foundation of our existence,
How can we be human if we value people like currency!
North, South, East, West, humans are the best,
Mind not location, human life is worth just the same.
Appearance may differ across geography,
But our innate humanity is one and the same.
So I say, a nation's value lies not in its currency,
But its regard for the welfare of all humanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“If the economy has collapsed in a country, success is to put the whole burden of the collapse on those who disrupted the economy, and to restore the economy without putting any burden on those who have no blame in the economic collapse! Other than that, a solution would be immoral and unscrupulous, and such a solution can only be applied by immoral and malicious people!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Like any ecosystem, a modern economy cannot survive without recycling. Just as animals and plants are continually recycling the oxygen and carbon dioxide that the other provides, so too must workers recycle their wages by spending them in shops and businesses recycle their revenues by spending them on salaries if both are to survive. And just as in our ecosystems, in which a failure of recycling leads to desertification, so when recycling breaks down in the economy we end up with a crisis that results in devastating poverty and deprivation.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails