Liberalization Quotes & Sayings

Even today, when the Obama administration has liberalized travel to Cuba - and failed to reverse that liberalization when Alan Gross was imprisoned - there are limits. — Elliott Abrams

There is one rule for the G-7 (richest countries) and another for the South. The G-7 now preaches open economies and liberalization, as well as 'good governance' and 'transparency'. Yet none of these things was conspicuous when the West grew rich. — Jeremy Seabrook

Much of America is now in need of an equivalent of Mrs. Thatcher's privatization program in 1980s Britain, or post-Soviet Eastern Europe's economic liberalization in the early Nineties. It's hard to close down government bodies, but it should be possible to sell them off. And a side benefit to outsourcing the Bureau of Government Agencies and the Agency of Government Bureaus is that you'd also be privatizing public-sector unions, which are the biggest and most direct assault on freedom, civic integrity, and fiscal solvency. — Mark Steyn

13 million Indians will join the workforce every year from now till 2030. They know their prospects aren't good. Here's why: in the years from 1972 to 1983 - not celebrated as a time of overwhelming prosperity - the total number of jobs in the economy nevertheless grew 2.3 per cent a year. In the years between liberalization in 1991 and today, jobs have grown at an average of only 1.6 per cent a year. But, if these young people have to be absorbed, then jobs must grow at least 3 per cent a year - almost twice the rate at which they have since liberalization. This is simply not happening. In other words, one out of every two youngsters who starts looking for a job next year won't find one. — Mihir S. Sharma

Much else than liberalization has happened in the nineties (in India) — Jean Dreze

It was before Vatican II and the liberalization of church doctrine. You weren't meant to eat meat on Friday in deference to Christ, who died on Friday. If you did, you went to hell, . That way, Hitler would be in hell alongside someone who ate meat on Friday. I thought there was no justice there. — Christopher Durang

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! — Ronald Reagan

Proponents of the Central America Free Trade Agreement have conveniently ignored this fundamental fact: the effect of trade on incomes in Central America and how to alleviate the adverse consequences of trade liberalization on the poor. — Stephen F. Lynch

The EU and the U.S. often work together to develop international standards. This is the case in fighting terrorism and transnational crime, advancing trade liberalization, and combating piracy and intellectual property violations. — John Bruton

Story of Pakistan' development makes an interesting reading-how a country with lot of baggage of underdevelopment and sets of contradictions and constraints, keeps on stumbling from phase to phase, adopting with religious fervour the mainstream globally accepted development ideas, policies and strategies, which are current at that time. From exclusive emphasis on growth and trickle down of 1960s, she took a U-turn and tried to redistribute the fruits of growth in 1970s.Failing miserably in this endeavour which resulted in an expanded state capitalism; she started denationalizing everything in the following decades and adopted the new mantra of liberalization. She is now struggling to remove poverty in the midst of glaring extravagance of certain classes to avoid bursting at the seams of society. — Shahid Hussain Raja

Fortunately, in Bolivia, we have begun to liberate ourselves economically. If we do not accompany social and cultural liberation with economic liberalization, the country will continue to be subjugated. — Evo Morales

Trade liberalization can be contagious, and the opening of markets regionally can spark progress multilaterally as well. — Roberto Azevedo

progress of the ethic of diffusion and liberalization has meant growing estrangement from precisely these prerequisites for human flourishing, especially among the least advantaged Americans. — Yuval Levin

With government deregulation and the triumph of financial liberalization, the dangers of systemic risks, the possibility of a financial tsunami, sharply increased. — Noam Chomsky

In the minds of many Western politicians, military interventions and air strikes appear to have become legitimate policy tools since the NATO attacks on Yugoslavia during the 1990s. That's how they intend to bring everyone into line who don't share the Western view of democratization of society and the liberalization of the economy. But there is no future for that kind of globalization. — Vladimir Yakunin

The war against jihadism has been chronically misunderstood because of our failure to acknowledge the religious motives of Muslim jihadists. This failure began in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Trapped in our Western secularist paradigms, we interpreted the uprising against the Shah as an anti-colonial revolt against a "brutal" autocrat propped up by the West for its own exploitative economic and geostrategic purposes. The aim of the revolution, the argument went, was to create a government more sympathetic to national sovereignty and Western pluralistic government. However, it soon became clear with the political triumph of the Ayatollah Khomeini that the revolution was in the main a religious one, inspired in part by anger at the Shah's secularization, modernization, and liberalization policies. As Khomeini said in 1962, the Shah's regime was "fundamentally opposed to Islam itself and the existence of a religious class. — Anonymous

During the past quarter of a century, most developing countries have liberalized trade to a huge degree. They were first pushed by the IMF and the World Bank in the aftermath of the Third World debt crisis of 1982. There was a further decisive impetus towards trade liberalization following the launch of the WTO in 1995. During the last decade or so, bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have also proliferated.Unfortunately, during this period, developing countries have not done well at all, despite (or because of, in my view) massive trade liberalization, — Ha-Joon Chang

One of the most violent attacks on the Church in the Soviet Union was under Kruschev when, during a period of economic and political liberalization, he attacked the Church to demonstrate to old Party members that he hadn't lost it. — George Pattison

Now financial liberalization is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there are very well understood reasons for that. — Noam Chomsky

Each government minister views the circumstances of each issue differently. An interior minister has a different view of visa liberalization than does a foreign minister. — Thomas De Maiziere

Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalization.. I hold unconventional views about this.. I do not believe if you are a libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed. — Lee Kuan Yew

Democratization is not democracy; it is a slogan for the temporary liberalization handed down from an autocrat. Glasnost is not free speech; only free speech, constitutionally guaranteed, is free speech. — Gail Sheehy

The development of European integration can be divided into two phases. The first era ended with the Maastricht Treaty. It was a liberalization phase, with the main goal of European integration at the time being the removal of various barriers and borders in Europe. The second phase is a homogenization or standardization phase, one that involves regulation from the top and growing control over our lives. This no longer has anything to do with freedom and democracy. — Vaclav Klaus

In many societies the domestic social costs of adjustment to changing patterns of comparative advantage are believed to outweigh the advantages of further trade liberalization. — Robert Gilpin

Chinese commentaries stress the opportunity that the investments and aid they offer presents to developing countries to avoid the hazards of reliance on Western dominated financial institutions: austerity programs that call for severe cuts in state-subsidized social welfare, deregulation of state-owned facilities, trade liberalization, and an open door for multinational corporation investment. — Melvin Gurtov

They want liberalization! I'll give them liberalization. I'll loosen the screws until the Americans beg me to tighten them again. — Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Just as solidarity had an underside of repression, so liberalization had an underside of chaos; — Yuval Levin

Liberalization and democratization are in essence counter-revolution. — Andrei Grechko

We have established a new basis in our country in which economic liberalization would continue to flourish alongside democratic forces and deregulated power structure. — Ibrahim Babangida

Even in recent times, the empirical evidence does not support the claim that trade liberalization or incentive neutrality leads to faster growth. It is true that higher manufacturing growth rates have been typically associated with higher export growth rates (mostly in countries where export and import shares to GDP grew), but there is no statistical relation between either of these growth rates or degree of trade restrictions. Rather, almost all of successful export-oriented growth has come with selective trade and industrialization policies. In this regard, stable exchange rates and national price levels seem to be considerably more important than import policy in producing successful export-oriented growth — Anwar Shaikh