“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.”

Even though some down payments are borrowed, it would take a large, and historically most unusual, fall in home prices to wipe out a significant part of home equity.

And the percentage changes in wage rates would be the same for all job grades.

Although the outlook is clouded by a number of uncertainties, the central tendencies of the projections .. imply continued good economic performance in the United States.

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.

Credit-default swaps, I think, have serious problems associated with them.

Everyone has one. You have to, to exist you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not.

[Republicans] swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions.

This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets.

History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.

Such caution seems especially warranted with regard to the sharp rise in equity prices during the past two years. These gains have obviously raised questions of sustainability.

Derivatives have permitted the unbundling of financial risks.

Greenspan, who knew so much more than most, knew far less than most supposed.

It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations.

If I’ve made myself clear, I’ve misspoken.

…our market system depends critically on trust-trust in the word of our colleagues and trust in the word of those with whom we do business.

The context has to come from the human first, rather than bits and pieces of fragments of old religion and all of the old moral superstructure, whatever it used to be.

Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising.

Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in – the one that we think is reality.

But herein lies the rub: Christianity has been on a long-term trend of decline in every Western cultural context that we can identify.

In the context of general relativity, space almost is a substance.

I believe that the general growth in large [financial] institutions have occurred in the context of an underlying structure of markets in which many of the larger risks are dramatically — I should say, fully — hedged.

[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.

The thing that interests me far more than anything is creating music, songwriting and arranging, and in that context drumming itself is a means to an end.