“The increased flexibility of our economy, which has fostered our extraordinary resilience to shocks.”

Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don’t think there is any need for a law against fraud.

There’s an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not be just a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology.

Whatever you tax you get less of.

The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

These days, even out of office, I still read economic reports.

Now, I only play very occasionally, and in fact, more piano than clarinet or sax.

No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.

Need to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path.

If prices go down, we will have problems – problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.

I was raising the question on the side with Governor Mullins of what would happen if the Treasury sold a little gold in this market.

The only effective regulation lies in the propensity of customers to choose alternatives, of investors to move their funds elsewhere and of labour to acquire technical skills’.

Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly,

Was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.

And whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction.

Senator, we are groping for understanding, the knowledge you assume I possess doesn’t exist’.

Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.

Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things.

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.

Teach a parrot the terms ‘supply and demand’ and you’ve got an economist.

During the Great Depression African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights, but they became impatient for economic emancipation.

We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people, so just punishing rich people is as bad for the economy as punishing anyone. Let’s not punish anyone.

For liberty to expand, government must shrink. For the economy to grow, government must get out of the way.

Republicans simply don’t know how to manage the economy.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.