A Quote by Paul Krugman

When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.

Paul Krugman

Quote Topics

Apply Becomes Caution Depression Economic Economic Policy Economics Folly Longer Policy Prevails Prudence Risky Rules Usual Vice Virtue

Quote Author

Paul Krugman
American - Economist
Born: February 28, 1953

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

Hippolyte Taine

We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.

Thomas Paine

A large-scale crisis - whether a terrorist attack or a financial crash - would likely provide the pretext to declare some sort of state of exception or emergency, where the usual rules no longer apply.

Naomi Klein

Economists get very uncomfortable when you talk about virtue and vice. It doesn't lend itself to a lot of columns with numbers. But I would argue that there are big virtue effects in economics. I would say that the spreading of double-entry bookkeeping by the Monk, Fra Luce de Pacioli, was a big virtue effect in economics. It made business more controllable, and it made it more honest.

Charlie Munger

Economists agree about economics - and that's a science - and they disagree about economic policy because that's a value judgment... I've had profound disagreements on policy with the famous Milton Friedman. But, on economics, we agree.

Franco Modigliani

From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.

Ron Paul

[Prudence] is the virtue of that part of the intellect [the calculative] to which it belongs; and . . . our choice of actions will not be right without Prudence any more than without Moral Virtue, since, while Moral Virtue enables us to achieve the end, Prudence makes us adopt the right means to the end.

Aristotle

Prudence is not the same thing as caution. Caution is a helpful strategy when you're crossing a minefield; it's a disaster when you're in a gold rush.

John Ortberg

If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence.

Aristotle

Cunning is none of the best nor worst qualities; it floats between virtue and vice; there is scarce any exigence where it may not, and perhaps ought not to be supplied by prudence.

Jean de la Bruyere

What the Depression teaches us is that when the economy is so depressed that even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, you have to put conventional notions of prudence and sound policy aside.

Paul Krugman

A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.

Joseph Addison

My interest in economics has always been in the whole corpus of economic theory, the interrelationships between the various fields of theory and their relevance for the formulation of economic policy.

James Meade

Virtue and vice are not arbitrary things; but there is a natural and eternal reason for goodness and virtue, and against vice and wickedness.

John Tillotson

Prudence as well as Moral Virtue determines the complete performance of a man's proper function: Virtue ensures the rightness of the end we aim at, Prudence ensures the rightness of the means we adopt to gain that end.

Aristotle

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.