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

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

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.

Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism.

Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds.

The recent period has been marked by a transformation to an economy that is more productive as competitive forces become increasingly intense and new technologies raise the efficiency of our businesses…

Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere.

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

Senator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me’.

We may be in a rapidly evolving international financial system with all the bells and whistles of the so-called new economy. But the old-economy rules of prudence are as formidable as ever. We violate them at our own peril.

The Iraq War is largely about oil.

While these tendencies were no doubt in train in the “old,” pre-1990s economy, they accelerated over the past decade as a number of technologies with their roots in the cumulative innovations of the past half-century began to yield dramatic economic returns.

What an ideology is is a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality.

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.

It signals problems with respect to currency markets. Central banks should pay attention to it.

I’m not denying that monopolies are terrible things, but I am denying that it is readily easy to resolve them through legislation of that nature.

If we were to do that we would increase the supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create and as a consequence of that we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country.

I’ve always liked using flutes and clarinets. Any time I can use those, I’m really happy.