Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell Quotes

United Kingdom, Businessman
October 5, 1955

Jonathan Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell is a British businessman and academic and was Chairman of the Financial Services Authority until its abolition in March 2013. He is a former Chairman of the Pensions Commission and the Committee on Climate Change, as well as a former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry. He has described himself in a BBC HARDtalk interview with Stephen Sackur as a 'technocrat'. He is a vocal advocate of the so-called "Helicopter money" idea whereby central banks would directly finance government spending or cash distribution to citizens. Since 2010, he has written monthly opinion columns on economic and regulatory policy for Project Syndicate.

Economists should study financial markets as they actually operate, not as they assume them to operate—observing the way in which information is actually processed, observing the serial correlations, bonanzas, and sudden stops, not assuming these away as noise around the edges of efficient and rational markets.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
In sum, therefore, many of the assumptions and analytical frameworks that underpin the instrumental argument for free markets and inequality are either invalid or much weaker than is commonly supposed.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell

In rich economies, stability matters a lot; small further increases in allocative efficiency matter less. Thus, policy should be heavily focused on ensuring macroeconomic and financial stability and very wary of financial innovation if it carries with it any risk of increased instability.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
If your credit is going to grow at 10-15 percent per year in order to get your 5 percent GDP growth per year, eventually you're going to have a problem. This isn't a stable system.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
- Problem
- System
- Credit
The capitalist system is not delivering those decade-after-decade increases it promised. We're not where we should be in terms of our national economies. We don't know how to get out of this malaise and I think we now have to consider more radical policies.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
The probability that we face global warming caused by fossil fuels is now so overwhelming that it is legitimate to doubt the motives of those who deny it.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
In economics, when you put together a highly elastic thing and a highly inelastic thing, you create extraordinary potential for turbulence, volatility, and for unstable prices.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
- Economics
- Prices
In the second half of the twentieth century, the idea became increas ingly dominant that attaining a superior growth rate and thus increased prosperity should be the central objective of public policy.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
- Growth
- Policy
- Prosperity

In absolute terms, we may have to look at restricting the number of flights people take.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell
- Flights
- Restricting
Economic history matters. Students of economics should read Charles MacKay and Charles Kindleberger, and should study the history of the Wall Street Crash as well as the theory and the mathematics required to formalize it.

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell