Politics

There are two basic underlying reasons. Firstly dysfunctional politics and secondly economic mistakes.

Nobel Prize-winning economist; Stanford provost and NYU president

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

Essentially therefore you have a three-pronged approach. Firstly privatisation, secondly cutting the size of the state and thirdly- collecting existing taxes (rather than imposing any new ones).

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

The ability for hedge funds and other private investment product to advertise is certainly a big deal that will have lasting impact on the manner which these products are distributed and marketed.

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 impose those within an hour of taking office.

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 government's economic strategy is clearly in disarray.

Former Federal Reserve Member & Leading Labor Economics Scholar

They used two wires hooked up to a car battery to give me electric shocks. They used electric stun-guns on my genitals twice. I thought I would never see my family again.

The guards hung me by my wrists from the ceiling for eight days…. After a few days of hanging, being denied sleep, it felt like my brain stopped working. I was imagining things. My feet got swollen on the third day. I felt pain that I have never felt in my entire life.

They forced me to undress. Then they started squeezing my fingers with pliers. They put staples in my fingers, chest and ears. I was only allowed to take them out if I spoke. The nails in the ears were the most painful.

There's definitely a sense that regulators don't understand how firms operate and the practicalities of what they do- and hence that regulations won't help resolve the issues, such as governance issues, that are there.

Following the crisis, nobody actually pinpointed its cause and hence where the deficiencies were. There were knee-jerk reactions to say hedge-funds caused it with leverage, they're bad and must be regulated…. but nobody looked at the fact that the market created a load of products that nobody understood, and then failed to manage them properly.

We even regulate toy guns, by requiring orange tips — but lawmakers don't have the gumption to stand up to National Rifle Association extremists and regulate real guns as carefully as we do toys.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist & New York Times Columnist

I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.

U.S. Representative from Texas; known for controversial statements

Since citizens' militias are anachronistic, gun owners now use the second amendment merely to defend individual gun ownership, as if that somehow offers protection against tyranny. A reckless, right-wing Supreme Court has agreed with them. As a result, gun ownership has become perversely linked to freedom in the vast gun-owning American sub-culture. But, instead of protection of freedom, Americans nowadays are getting massive bloodshed and fear.

Economist & Director of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

Investors who previously thought that sovereigns were a quasi-risk-free asset have been challenged in that respect. Domestic local-currency sovereign debt is certainly not risk-free. It very much depends on the willingness and ability of the sovereign to pay-back its debt!

Climate scientist and energy systems researcher at University of Manchester