Ian Bremmer Quotes

India and China offer intriguing mirror images. Modern India has long been open politically and, until recently, closed economically. Modern China has opened economically, but remains politically closed. The comparison reveals that, while politics and economics can never fully be separated, political openness is a better guarantor of long-term stability than economic openness.

State capitalism is about more than emergency government spending, implementation of more intelligent regulation, or a stronger social safety net. It’s about state dominance of economic activity for political gain.

The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes—unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime’s safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve—however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins.

Political scientists don't work at banks—which is a problem. As political issues become more important for the markets, analysts at banks are asked all sorts of questions they don't have the ability to answer. And if you're getting paid to answer questions—as analysts at banks are—you never want to be in the position of saying you don't know.

New York used to be the financial capital of the world. It's no longer even the financial capital of the U.S. For the moment, Washington is.

In the last 21 months, if you've learnt anything, it's that the state is back. If the free market fails, it's not because it's been defeated by state capitalism; the only people that can defeat the free market is us, we're the only ones who can destroy it.

The free market tide has now receded. In its place has come state capitalism, a system in which the state functions as the leading economic actor and uses markets primarily for political gain.

Everyone's talked about Bank of America and Citigroup and the rest being too big to fail, but no, no, no. The most important point...is that the US must be perceived to be too big to fail.

The great thing about the U.S. economy right now is that we are the smart kids in the stupid-kid class. America has fiscal problems and gridlock issues and polarity and partisanship in Congress -- and yet, compared to Japan and Europe, the U.S. looks great.

An emerging market is a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the market.

When you're leaving your teenage kids alone, probably a good idea to let them know you're going to be checking in on them occasionally. I suspect Greenspan missed that part.

The G-Zero isn't aspirational, it's analytic. Unfortunately, it's also where we are.

The great thing about partisanship is you don't have to spend time understanding the issues to know what side you're on.

I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly...they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences – they're not interested in free markets."

Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.