Voices on the Ills of the Economy

We all face the same problems, whether you are a very large corporation or a very small company such as mine . . . employee problems, health insurance problems, transportation problems, the whole gamut.

Kathleen Piper, who runs the Pied Piper Flower Shop, Yankton, S.D.

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This is not just a short-term glitch. Without a strong recovery, it will be a lot harder to solve the long-run problems of the economy.

Robert M. Solow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel Prize-winning economist

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It’s not a discussion. It’s a show. (But) it’s a better show than I thought it would be.

Paul Krugman, economics professor at MIT

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While it is a tragedy that thousands are starving in Somalia, ‘it is a human and moral travesty that 14.3 million children are poor in the richest land on Earth.’

Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund

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The world economy is ‘at a turning point not unlike what we saw’ in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century.

John A. Sculley, chairman of Apple Computer Inc.

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The growth in productivity has been so low over the past 20 years as to be ‘absolutely frightening.’

Alan S. Blinder, professor of economics at Princeton

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The importance of the session was that ‘a dialogue has begun . . . . To expect much more would be naive and unrealistic.’

Mary Frances Kelley of Denver, National Federation of Independent Business

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We should recall . . . that America’s great public works . . . required great cooperation and sometimes a leap of faith.

Alicia H. Munnell, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

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We keep changing the rules. And that instability causes companies to waiver, to hold back from investment.

Michael Porter, Harvard business professor