“The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.”

Life is not a multiple choice test, it’s an open-book essay exam.

And there would be an inventory pileup. And then – bam – businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production.

His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both.

Murphys law of economic policy’: Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed.

If you try to give an on-the-one-hand-or-the-other- hand answer, only one of the hands tends to get quoted.

In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters.

Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

They have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.

And the maestro surely wielded the chairman’s baton with extraordinary skill.

There is a kind of a cascading chain, … If one can’t sell, then that business doesn’t buy and that means the next business doesn’t sell, and the previous business doesn’t sell, and so on.

I love my dog. I hate bankers. I have issues with women. In my head, I’m a great guy.

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.

They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

While we read a novel, we are insane-bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices… Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Ladies touch babies like a banker touches gold, outlaws touch ladies somewhere deep down in their soul.

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

The methods it employs with such acumen, persistency, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.

Banks have a new image. Now you have ‘a friend,’ your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?