Utkarsh Shah

“In reality, states never repay their debt. They roll it over, meaning they defer repayment endlessly, paying only the interest on the loans. As long as they can keep doing this, they remain solvent. It helps to think of public debt as a hole in the ground next to a mountain representing the nation’s total income. Day by day the hole gets steadily deeper as interest accrues on the debt, even if the state does not borrow more. But during the good times, as the economy grows, the income mountain is steadily getting taller. As long as the mountain rises faster than the debt hole deepens, the extra income added to the mountain’s summit can be shovelled into the adjacent hole, keeping its depth stable and the state solvent. Insolvency beckons when the economy stops growing or starts to contract: recession then eats into a country’s income mountain, doing nothing to slow the pace at which the debt hole continues to grow.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment

“Austerity is a morality play pressed into the service of legitimizing cynical wealth transfers from the have-nots to the haves during times of crisis, in which debtors are sinners who must be made to pay for their misdeeds.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment

“John Kenneth Galbraith: ‘There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment

“Take advantage of your disadvantages, feature the few assets you may have, and work harder than anyone else around you.”
― Scott Sonenshein, Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less - and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined