“Developing protectionism regarding trade and our reluctance to place fiscal policy on a more sustainable path are threatening what may well be our most valued policy asset.”

The recent evidence increasingly suggests that an economic expansion is already well under way, although an array of influences unique to this business cycle seems likely to moderate its speed.

The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so…

I’m always amazed that my wife can handle different subjects – one day politics, the next day foreign policy.

Rules cannot take the place of character.

If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets.

Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.

I must say, I never expected to see the day where I would be talking about anything other than reducing the debt, I’m running into the tyranny of zero, which is where you can’t reduce (the debt) any more

If I say something which you understand fully in this regard, I probably made a mistake.

Market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years.

There is nothing to guarantee the superior judgment, knowledge, and integrity of an inspector or a bureaucrat-and the deadly consequences of entrusting him with arbitrary power are obvious.

Remember what we’re looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.

I love facts and figures. It’s like following a detective story, piecing together what’s going on in the economy.

We ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labour from all parts of the world because [the state of the world is as follows: ].

What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.

Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes.