We did stop the meltdown. We avoided what would have been, I think, a collapse of the global financial system. That was obviously a good thing. But one thing that I was always sure of and the Federal Reserve was always sure of was that a collapse of some of these big financial firms was going to have very serious collateral consequences. There were people arguing even as late as September 2008, "Well, why don't you just let the firms collapse? There is a system that can take care of it: bankruptcy. Why don't you let them fail?” We never thought that was a good option. Particularly, if the whole system had collapsed, we would have had extraordinarily serious consequences.
Ben BernankeRelated topics
bankruptcy care collateral fail federal good late stop sure take thing thought well global meltdownRelated quotes
The schooling system we have in the Western world is crazy – you're taken away from your parents at your most impressionable age and fed a load of bullshit and lies manipulated to make you think that the way we live in the West is stable and moral, when really it's neither. You come out of school with a one-track mind based on financial success; you're encouraged to become enslaved to the banking system. In school, I always felt, ‘Something's not right here' and I'm starting to find out what it is. Being outside of the norm gives you freedom of thought and that's something being suppressed in school and the media. If you have freedom of thought you get labeled as a crazy person or someone strange.
Matthew Bellamy
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. ... It is very hard to realise that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Steven Weinberg
God has permitted and does permit us to be shaken by adversity. Difficult times lie ahead. We will be greatly tested. We have to take this warning seriously and live spiritually... Many saints would have loved to have lived in our times and have had our chance to struggle for Christ... Our struggle matters because it is not a struggle against an Ali Pasha, or a Hitler and a Mussolini, but a struggle against the devil himself. For this reason, our wages will be heavenly... The saints will become more holy and the vile will become more vile. Yet I feel great consolation inside. This is only a storm; like past storms, it will pass. May the Good God take evil and turn it into good. Amen.
Paisios of Mount Athos
Do everything simply and meekly. Do nothing with an ulterior motive. Don't say, I'll do this in order to have that result, but do it naturally, without taking cognizance of it. That is, pray simply and don't think about what God will bestow on your soul. Don't make any calculations. You know, of course, what God bestows when you enter into communion with Him, but it is as if you don't know. Don't discuss the matter even with yourself. So when you repeat the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”, say it simply and ingenuously and think of nothing other than the prayer. These are very delicate matters and the intervention of the grace of God is required.
Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia
The big thing that happened in the early to mid-90s was the last big discussion about political economy. Roughly speaking we went for endogenous growth, for flexible labour markets and the financial sector, and that was considered modern. The book that I wrote at that time was arguing that the German system – which had worker representation on boards, very strong vocational training, regional banks, very strong federal forms of democratic government – was actually better suited to globalisation because it preserved knowledge, trust, institutions, skills ... Now, I think the results of our experiment are in and we really got it wrong.
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman