Clergyman's

People say monetary policy is easy and quick to implement. It can even be done overnight on the telephone, they say fiscal policy drags out in political and congressional debate in our country. It might take months to implement. But the point is that once fiscal policy is implemented, it might go to work much faster than monetary policy.
- Lawrence Klein

The centrally planned economies, dissatisfied with the outcome of their own efforts to achieve good economic growth performance, have changed strategy and decided to import high technology from the West. as well as necessary grains to supplement their domestic agicultural supplies. This new approach has opened their economies to Western inflation because imports have been reflecting rising world price. Gold and oil sales at correspondingly rising prices have been used by the Soviet Union to finance part of their import needs. but they are fully enmeshed in world inflation accounting in balancing rising export prices.
- Lawrence Klein

I believe that monetary policy has a chronic defect. It is asymmetric—it works better in restraining an economy than in stimulating an economy.
- Lawrence Klein

There are many reasons there was higher inflation in the 1970s. But that is a complicated story that deals with much more than tax policies.
- Lawrence Klein

At the beginning of a decade it is tempting to look ahead for the next ten years.
- Lawrence Klein

Although I was not aware of it at the time, the experience of growing up during the Great Depression was to have a profound impact on my intellectual and professional career.
- Lawrence Klein

The centrally planned economics used to consider themselves well insulated against the economic ills of the rest of the world. This is no longer the case.
- Lawrence Klein

I think the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut was a marvelous success in 1964. It was too bad it was not implemented a little sooner, and Kennedy died, of course. After that, Johnson dallied for a while about raising taxes to pay for the war in Vietnam. The stimulus did not get reversed until the tax increase and expenditure cap of 1969, and that had a quick effect once it was enacted. As you know, we had a recession in 1969–1970.
- Lawrence Klein

At Chicago, I was in the midst of a veritable galaxy of stars: Trygve Haavelmo, Tjalling Koopmans, Theodore Anderson, Leonid Hurwicz, Herman Rubin, Kenneth Arrow,,, and Herbert Simon, among others. I completed my first of a series of macroeconometric models, solidified my understanding of econometrics, learned about the functioning of the economy, and got started on several theoretical paths such as aggregation, demand systems, and prediction.
- Lawrence Klein

You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. Or monetary policy is pulling on a string when the economy is strong. That works. But when the economy is weak and you are cutting interest rates, it can be like pushing on a string. It does not work as well.
- Lawrence Klein