Lawrence Summers

If you look at the history of the American capital market, there's probably no innovation more important than the idea of generally accepted accountancy principles.

But ultimately what I was impressed by during my years in government was how much the intellectual climate and the prevailing intellectual notions constrained and represented the universe within which the discourse took place.

Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon of globalization.

Blaming speculators as a response to financial crisis goes back at least to the Greeks. It's almost always the wrong response.

I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it.

The dramatic modernization of the Asian economies ranks alongside the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution as one of the most important developments in economic history.

You can't have a situation in which companies proceed on a permanent basis relying only on cash from the government.

We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises.

Global capital markets pose the same kinds of problems that jet planes do. They are faster, more comfortable, and they get you where you are going better. But the crashes are much more spectacular.

It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today.

In politics, as in poetry, it is sometimes true that it is darkest before dawn.

There are children who are working in textile businesses in Asia who would be prostitutes on the streets if they did not have those jobs.