You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way

Daniel Hannan, voice of warning in an age of economic storms, once declared with cutting simplicity: “You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.” In this maxim lies a truth as old as the marketplace itself: that prosperity cannot be conjured by illusions, nor freedom purchased with chains. For to spend recklessly in famine is to empty the storehouse, and to borrow without restraint is to shackle the future. Hannan speaks as one who sees beyond the glitter of quick remedies, pointing instead to the hard discipline of balance and prudence.

The origin of this saying arises from his critique of governments that answered financial collapse with vast new debts and endless stimulus. In the wake of the great recession, leaders promised salvation through spending, pouring borrowed gold into failing systems. Yet Hannan, a student of history, warned that such cures are but poisons in disguise. To heal by debt is to bind future generations to servitude, while claiming to give them freedom today. His words are less an economic formula than a moral rebuke: one cannot build strength upon weakness, nor liberty upon dependence.

History confirms his warning. In ancient Rome, emperors in decline sought to appease the mob with grain and games, spending the treasury into ruin. To fund their extravagance, they debased the coinage, borrowing from the wealth of tomorrow. The result was not prosperity, but collapse, as Rome’s strength rotted from within. Hannan’s maxim echoes their folly: a nation cannot cheat arithmetic, for debt is a master that never forgets.

So too in more recent times, the fate of Weimar Germany illustrates the peril. To spend its way out of crisis, the government printed money until it drowned its citizens in hyperinflation. Paper marks became worthless; families carted wages in wheelbarrows to buy bread. What began as a policy of relief ended as national humiliation, paving the path for extremism. Thus the truth is revealed: false cures breed deeper disease.

Therefore, O seekers of wisdom, take this counsel to heart. Recession cannot be conquered by illusion, nor debt defeated by borrowing still more. The path to freedom is not ease, but discipline; not indulgence, but patience. Nations, like men, must live within their means if they are to remain sovereign. For no empire, no republic, no household can escape the law of balance: what is not earned cannot endure.