Sitting in the Oval Office, beneath a painting of George Washington, with a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. over his right shoulder and a bust of Abraham Lincoln over his left shoulder, Obama told 'National Journal' that the country's economic woes are deep and endemic.
The poor pay more, and that's one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.
In economic terms, we've always thought of work as a disutility - as something you do to get something else. Now it's increasingly a utility - something that's valuable and worthy in its own right.
While the digital transformation of industries will be profound, we must keep in mind that it will have wider economic and social impact, too, as with previous revolutions driven by steam and coal, electricity and computers.
Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.
The foundation of collectivism is simple: There should be no important economic differences among people. No one should be too rich.
The financial sector is vital to the economy. A well-functioning financial sector promotes job creation, innovation, and inclusive economic growth.
If the United States is to protect itself from the economic and the political threats created by this excessive dependence, we must reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources and on foreign oil as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, I'm all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities.
We live in a culture that's been hijacked by the management consultant ethos. We want everything boiled down to a Power Point slide. We want metrics and 'show me the numbers.' That runs counter to the immensely complex nature of so many social, economic and political problems. You cannot devise an algorithm to fix them.
The refugee crisis is a challenge for the whole of Europe, and Europe - it's a very fair point to say it's not just a security issue. It's also an economic issue.
Traditionally in capitalism, when you have more cash, you can fund more activity, which produces more jobs and creates more wealth. That's basic economic theory.
If someone comes to me, any community in the Northern Territory, with a viable economic future, and says, 'We want to be part of a bold new approach,' I'll put them down as a major project, and I'll do everything I can to help them out.
The market is the creator of social wealth and the wellspring of self-sustaining economic development.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
I should like very much to go to America. I have heard so much of the great industrial and economic development of that great land, and I wish to see things for myself.
It's very clear that TPP was promoted by corporate interests, it was driven by ideology, not by economic science. And when they started looking at the net trade benefits, they are miniscule.
In 1994, Estonia became the first European country to adopt a flat tax, and its 26 percent flat tax dramatically energized what had been a faltering economy. Before adopting the flat tax, the Estonian economy was literally shrinking. In the eight years after 1994, Estonia experienced real economic growth - averaging 5.2 percent per year.
When, in his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan famously said government is the problem, not the solution, he established the Republican mantra that has not changed in all the years since. It was a clever bit of rhetoric, but it has turned too many Republicans into economic simpletons.
Access to capital is critical for small business success and crucial to our economic recovery. Without access to capital, many small companies are not able to maintain operations, let alone expand and create new jobs.
Throughout the years following World War II and until the formation of the European Economic Community in 1958, I was very active as a national or international rapporteur at many of the international conferences aiming to establish an European community.
The wild open-market theory that died in 1929 had a run of just over thirty years. Communism, a complete melding of religious, economic, and global theories, stretched to seventy years in Russia and forty-five years in central Europe, thanks precisely to the intensive use of military and police force.
When you see government leaders really bullying business, you know that government's economic policy is failing. They get angry and they get desperate.
Evidence suggests jobs are crucial not only to economic well-being but also to self-esteem.
What we get from building a space station, the economic return, the science return, is very, very important to our nation, to our economy.
Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can't afford to double-down on trickle-down.
From the ashes of a financial crash, there is a chance to create a new economic settlement that is more equal, sustainable and democratic.
You eventually have to figure out how to balance the books. So that's the reason I gave up my day job to come do this was to go fight to create the space where spending matches America's capacity to tax, and that means economic growth and a smaller, humbler federal government.
Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.
All economic forecasts are subject to considerable uncertainty. There is always a wide range of plausible outcomes for important economic variables, including the federal funds rate.
I can probably earn more in an hour of writing or even teaching than I could save in a whole week of cooking. Specialization is undeniably a powerful social and economic force. And yet it is also debilitating. It breeds helplessness, dependence, and ignorance and, eventually, it undermines any sense of responsibility.
Unfortunately, I think we could see that fairly early in 2015: The cloud of economic weakness in Russia is spreading over Europe. It has the potential of spreading into contagion into other emerging markets, particularly those with large energy companies, such as Petrobras in Brazil.
We will support the long-term economic development of new, innovative activities in the space and satellite industries as a key high-tech sector for Luxembourg.
Left-wing shareholder activists seek to leverage the mass economic power of institutional investors such as pension funds, whose managers are supposed to focus strictly on their fiduciary responsibilities to retirees.
We must prepare the ground for creativity. And if this also gives rise later to success in the economic sense, success in terms of Euros and Cents, this will by no means reduce my joy.
Our educational system should make the Filipino fit not just for whatever jobs happen to be on offer today, but also for whatever economic challenge life will throw in their way.
