Koch Industries is a multibillion-dollar business.
— Austan Goolsbee
The debt ceiling is not something to toy with.
One of the most interesting things that I'm seeing of the Trump picks is such a heavy business and financial focus. I can't help but feel like this is going to throw a lot of policy weight and details back to Congress, because these are not people who have a lot of experience drafting legislation.
We've gone through rounds of tax cutting and rounds of tax increases in modern U.S. history. We haven't really had a big igniting of a trade war belligerence since the Depression era, and that's not an era that we want to repeat.
Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA.
If it was up to me, I would have put more money into the state fiscal relief.
I was always a data guy, not a theorist. Theorists can maintain total purity. The data are always messy.
I always felt my role was like the pit crew in a NASCAR race, and President Obama was Dale Jr.- he's driving, and my job is to change the tires and get him back on the road.
I can't remember exactly, but the White House is not keen on people going on Fox News. It's my view that while people in the administration feel that Fox News doesn't give them a fair shake, the fact of the matter is there are a lot of people who watch Fox News.
For every criticism of the U.S. economy, whenever people go into a panic, they look around and say, 'That's the cleanest shirt I have. So I'm putting it on.'
The U.S. is still in a pretty good spot, especially relative to other advanced countries. The aging of our population is not as pronounced as almost anyone else's.
All I'll say is if you look at countries where it is - where they are rapidly growing, they're investing in their infrastructure. They're investing in their educations. They are trying to streamline regulations, but they're not neglecting key investments.
I'm not afraid to take a punch.
A lot more people are willing to invest in bonds denominated in euros. And there was the fiscal discipline argument, which is that this tied the hands of countries the market hasn't always trusted, which also helped them borrow at low rates.
That is what happened in 2010. The administration and the leadership of the Republicans thought, 'Well, we're making a deal together; we're showing the world things can be done in a bi-partisan way. We're extending all our tax cuts for two years.'
When Texans suffered from the collapse of the oil market in the 1980s, they could rely on the fiscal union to help them. When Texas boomed with rising oil prices in the 2000s, it contributed to the union to help harder hit regions.
History teaches that the level of unemployment is not as important as whether the rate's going down.
In this country, we have partnerships, we have S corps, we have LLCs, we have a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax.
Yes, prices go up in health care. They have been doing so for 80 straight years.
You can't look back at the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes that started in 2008 and not have some important lessons about the critical nature of oversights in financial markets and institutions.
My impression is the Trump administration is in imminent danger of violating the gunfighter's credo, which is 'Do not pick seven fights if you are carrying a six shooter.'
When the Internet first appeared, this heated debate developed among economists. One side said the Internet will make it easier for companies to price-discriminate, and it'll be fabulously profitable.
I don't see why anybody's playing chicken with the debt ceiling.
If you're going to be an academic who's involved in the world of policy, you have to be involved in the world that exists.
I get massive invective, massive abuse, via email, phone messages, and Twitter. From people way, way to the right of center - scary, abusive kind of stuff. Really freaks out my assistant and my wife. Hate-filled.
If Democrats don't go on Fox News, it doesn't mean that people stop watching.
I'm pretty happy not to be an insider anymore. There's just no common ground. I don't know if it's distrust or that the politics is substantially more partisan than the public. But there's no pressure to make a grand bargain on fiscal matters, on growth, on anything.
What happened is we went into a recession beginning in December of 2007 that was the worst since 1929. And it is a very deep hole that we have been struggling to get out of.
You have to be looking for a job to get unemployment benefits. If you stop looking for work, you are no longer eligible to receive benefits.
They set a low bar for Donald Trump, and he banged his head on it.
In Michigan, in the mid-'80s, the unemployment rate goes way up because a lot of factories shut down. And then, the mid-2000s, to pick a date, the unemployment rate in Michigan isn't that much higher than in the rest of the country. But the main way that happened is people moved.
I was named DC's funniest celebrity.
Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages.
Look, I don't dispute that the deficit has increased.
If we hit the debt ceiling, that's... essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history. The impact on the economy would be catastrophic.
Applying cost-benefit analysis to regulation is no different than what most regulatory agencies do.
To the extent that the Trump administration doesn't like a strong dollar, something has got to give, and just yelling at other countries for devaluing when you're raising rates and they're cutting rates is not going to work.
Trade has helped the economy grow. Simultaneously, a sizable number of Americans haven't shared in that bounty, and if we don't pay attention to their concerns, all the political favor for open markets will dry up.
When I was at MIT, they had a beta test of Mosaic, the first popular browser. I remember looking at it, and there was a weather map or something. Now, in fairness to me, there weren't any websites then. But I remember saying, 'This is stupid - what's the point?' Now, of course, it's obvious.
If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.
There's a certain kind of academic that comes to Washington and can't survive. They're the ones starting each sentence with 'The economic model says.'
Research professors don't watch a whole lot of TV.
If you look at the Greek economic record, it's been very similar to the U.S. experience in the first four years of the Great Depression. And after having a Depression-sized event, they've cut the unit-labor cost in Greece - they've closed something like half the gap with Germany.
In several quarters in the 2000s, if you added up all the private savings of everyone in the United States, it was less than nothing. You can't sustain that as a driver of growth.
Let's pass the small business credit enhancement bill so small business can get back on its feet.
What Disneyland was to my kids at age 10, that's kind of what Chicago is for economists.
Whenever I interview someone for a job, I always ask them whether they want to sit in Bernanke's chair. The only wrong answer is, 'Who's Bernanke?'.
At the time of the formation of the euro, I would say most American economists said that's not a good idea; that's not a currency area that makes sense. And the answer from Europe was, 'How is Missouri and Mississippi a currency area?' But the flaw in that was not recognizing the importance of mobility.
We have to do everything we can to try to create jobs and get people back to work.
The U.S. fiscal union has worked, in no small part, by enabling subsidies to the Mississippis without requiring the approval of the Minnesotas. It creates an important form of insurance.
