David Malpass Quotations

The tenth amendment said the federal government is supposed to only have powers that were explicitly given in the Constitution. I think the federal government's gone way beyond that. The Constitution never said that you could have a Federal Reserve that would have $2.8 trillion in assets. We've gotten out of control.

The Fed should make a clear commitment to stable money to reduce the swings in interest rates and inflation. Instead, it champions and flaunts unstable money. This encourages momentum trading and the growth of derivatives. Meanwhile, layers of financial regulation make Washington bigger and more powerful but dont fix the underlying problems.

People's jobs are the biggest asset that they have. The net present value of your job is worth more than your house or your stock portfolio. As people decide whether they're going to buy a car, they're more concerned about whether they have a job and are likely to have a job next year.

To win elections, politicians have promised practically endless government spending and covered up the cost, leaving generations of taxpayers obligated to pay off the debt. Thats wrong, but neither the U.S. nor Europe has a plan to stop it.

The assumption that Washington could and would resolve Lehman Brothers without a bankruptcy, as it had Bear Stearns, was the single biggest mistake in the series of mistakes in 2007 and 2008 that led to the financial panic and the ensuing epidemic of job losses.

Politicians are addicted to spending and revenue extraction. As with an addict, there's little pause for moral or legal contemplation.

When Congress legislates in haste, it often causes more problems than it solves. But Congress rarely reconsiders its mistakes.

Every generation has an obligation to leave its children in a better position than it inherited. Our representatives in Washington are breaking faith with that covenant. America must reduce its federal spending and accumulation of debt for the sake of generations to come.

If stocks double but the dollar loses half its value, who beyond Wall Street are the winners and losers?

I don't want to see the dollar strong because the rest of the world is crumbling. I would like to see the dollar strong because the Fed has said it wants it to be strong in the future.

While Washington pays lip service to the challenges facing small businesses, it repeatedly chooses its own expansion over results. In effect, government has become a huge silent partner in all businesses, often taking a majority of the profits and forcing many unprofitable business decisions without the risk that it will be fired.

For small businesses, you need less taxes, less federal spending, and you need less regulation that blocks their growth.

The world is constantly in a race to the top, in terms of there's a limited amount of capital and you've got to figure where it's going. And if your currency is weakening, that means you're paying a load.

What you have been seeing over the last year is the policy of Jiang Zemin, not Deng Xiaoping.

I think there's still just a long grinding process ahead of Brazil, as they try to shake through this.

We're not expecting a panicky financial market meltdown or much further dollar weakness.

It is more important what the jobs report shows in December and January -- that will affect how many rate hikes we'll have this spring.

Already were seeing graduates of U.S. higher education going back to their home countries and contributing to societies there, where in the past they would have stayed in the U.S. and built new companies here. We have to have immigration reform that allows talented foreigners to become Americans.

Earnings of corporations are going to be under more and more pressure.

The trade deficit is much more responsive to the growth and consumption differential than to exchange rates.

Already we're seeing graduates of U.S. higher education going back to their home countries and contributing to societies there, where in the past they would have stayed in the U.S. and built new companies here. We have to have immigration reform that allows talented foreigners to become Americans.

The U.S. has a law on the books called the debt limit, but the name is misleading. The debt limit started in 1917 for the purpose of facilitating more national debt, not reducing it. It still serves that purpose. It's unconnected to spending, hurts our credit rating and has been an abject failure at limiting debt.

It's not coincidence that the U.S. is in last place in the world in terms of corporate tax rate. It's because our system is set up to block tax reform.

I'll put it this way. We're surviving and we hope the voles aren't.