Wisdom in fragments

Everything you do in life that's worthwhile entails some risk, that's the nature of exploration and the nature of adventure.

Astronaut on Apollo 16 Moon Landing Mission

They should be stress-testing their balance sheets and portfolios under a range of negative scenarios, and have sufficient capital and liquidity to withstand scenarios that are far out on the tail of the distribution of possible outcomes. The stress tests should account for potential bubbles in global asset markets.

Chief Economist of Moody's Analytics & Economic Forecaster

Global investors were awash in cash due to current account surpluses in emerging economies and easy monetary policies. Investors from emerging economies first invested their rapidly rising wealth in risk-free Treasuries, but once they had their fill of Treasuries they looked for higher yield in what they thought was the next safest thing, U.S. residential mortgages. Due to shrinking returns on less risky investments, other global investors began to search for yield by taking more risk investing in more complicated securities and derivatives.

Chief Economist of Moody's Analytics & Economic Forecaster

Most fundamentally, the subprime bubble was created by- a surfeit of global liquidity due to large current account surpluses in China and other emerging economies and easy global monetary policies; a flawed private mortgage securitization process that funnelled the liquidity into poorly underwritten mortgage and other loans; and weak regulatory oversight that failed to catch and rectify the problems in the securitization process.

Chief Economist of Moody's Analytics & Economic Forecaster

Germany for example, has decided to close-down its nuclear industry. That creates a huge electricity deficit, and there is the potential to produce a large amount of renewable energy in Greece and export it to countries like that.

Professor of Economics specializing in network economics and digital markets

The important thing which central government can do is to promise, without reservation, that there will be no new taxation and 'emergency' taxation- and that they will focus on collecting existing taxes by expanding the tax-base to those who are evading taxes.

Professor of Economics specializing in network economics and digital markets

A lot of negatives have already happened in Greece, and now there is an opportunity. Most Greek assets have been going down in price at some time, and if you happen to hold the right assets? You'll make a killing!

Professor of Economics specializing in network economics and digital markets

There is a significant part of the Greek economy- maybe 30-40%- is not in the 'official' books. That has to be reined in. To put this in context, if that is reined in… to a large extent, the revenue side of the Greek problem would be fixed.

Professor of Economics specializing in network economics and digital markets

If Greece gets serious about privatisation, reducing the state sector and collecting existing taxes... if these things are done, whilst also reducing democracy? Then I believe Greece will emerge as a very significant success story. It could get the primary deficit eliminated in two years- creating a surplus.

Professor of Economics specializing in network economics and digital markets

Big firms can get credit and are not using it while small firms cannot get credit at all.

Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

If you want to rebalance, you have to understand that you must rebalance from construction and finance into something else. But what? It's very hard to see where any sustainable growth can come from.

Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

To talk of 'a march of the makers'... I was just looking at a collapse in the numbers of process, plant and machine operatives... The march of the makers has actually been a march of the unemployed-makers!

Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

Why would anybody at all invest in an economy where the three leaders said the country was bankrupt?! That's what's killed off confidence and investment in the economy.

Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

The economy is in the doldrums and likely to worsen. The UK economy has performed worse than most Euro Zone countries, and the calls for a change, of course, are becoming pretty loud. The economists who backed Osborne in 2010 have basically withdrawn their support, the IMF lowered its growth forecast and so on. The government's economic strategy is clearly in disarray.

Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

I would essentially- start by abandoning everything Osborne set out to do. I would be cutting taxes, not raising them. I would immediately reverse the VAT raise that he had. I would immediately remove national insurance on the young, and give firms very big tax incentives to hire and invest. I would impose those within an hour of taking office.

Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

I think the scale is potentially huge. Frankly, this is one of the reason why investigation is so important. The best approach is to keep an open mind and let the investigation go where it may.

MIT Finance Professor & Pioneer of Quantitative Finance & Behavioral Economics