Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy:

In recent years, whenever other countries — Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea or Mexico — got themselves into an economic crisis, we lectured them about how they had to adopt 'shock therapy'.

But now that we are the ones in crisis and in need of shock therapy, everyone is preaching gradualism.

Dr. King, in 1963:

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Recently:

It’s hard to get people to do something bad all in one big jump, but if you can cut it up into small enough pieces, you can get people to do almost anything.

And from 2007:

Fortune: And what happens next?

Bird: Well, then, this debt, this mortgage, this debt, is taken, bought by a bank and packaged together on Wall Street with a lot of other, similar debts.

Fortune: Without going into much detail about what is actually --

Bird: -- Without going into any detail, no, it's far too boring.

Bird: And so, this is put into a package of debt, and then it's moved onto Wall Street, and then, this ... it's extraordinary what happens then ... Somehow, this package of dodgy debts stops being a package of dodgy debts and starts being what we call a structured investment vehicle.

No Time for Gradualism