Wealth & Money Quote by Richard Grasso

Grasso’s line reads like a civics lesson, but it’s really a permission slip for a particular kind of economic realism: interdependence isn’t a theory, it’s a “basic requirement.” That phrasing does quiet work. By calling it basic, he frames globalization as gravity - something you can complain about, but not repeal. The intent is managerial, not poetic: normalize a world where borders don’t map cleanly onto markets, and where national economic pride has to coexist with global supply chains, capital flows, and shared risk.

The subtext is aimed at skeptics who still imagine economic sovereignty as a switch you can flip. “Admit” is the tell. He’s not asking people to celebrate globalization, just to stop pretending they can opt out without consequences. It’s a rhetorical move that shifts debate from whether globalization should exist to how to live inside it - regulation, trade policy, labor standards, financial supervision. Once interdependence is treated as a given, dissent starts to look like denial.

Context matters: Grasso is a businessman, best known for his Wall Street leadership, speaking from the vantage point of markets that reward frictionless movement of money and punish political fantasies. Post-Cold War optimism and the late-20th-century acceleration of trade and finance hang in the background, along with the recurring shock that crises don’t respect passports. The quote’s power is its bluntness: it doesn’t sell a utopia. It sells the uncomfortable truth that in a networked economy, other countries’ problems have a way of becoming your own balance sheet.