“I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.”

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.

Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.

I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy.

Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict.

The economy is turning, and credit comes in with a lag, .. To the extent that a number of small firms are finding it difficult to get the credit they need at a price they can afford, that’s likely to change for the better.

Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it’s pretty clear that it’s an unsustainable underlying pattern.

If we allow terrorism to undermine our freedom of action, we could reverse at least part of the palpable gains achieved by postwar globalization. It is incumbent upon us not to allow that to happen.

Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which… public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.

There is no evidence that the business cycle has been repealed.

While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity.

The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.

I love to play tennis and golf, listen to music, watch baseball and root for the Redskins.

It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum.

The arts develop skills and habits of mind that are important for workers in the new economy of ideas.

I was in the Rockin’ Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain.

… Grateful Dead – that’s it !! … nobody in the band liked it, (the name) I didn’t like it, either, but it got around that that was one of the candidates for our new name, and everyone else said, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’

I used to soak my mitts in a bucket of water for about two days. Then I’d put a couple of baseballs in the pocket and wrap it up with a rubber band.

I’ve asked these guys in rock bands with all the 18-wheelers driving to the venue how they make money. I just don’t understand it. But I don’t understand a lot of things.

My favorite bands are the Allman Brothers and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The baby boomers’ politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there’s been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.

Christian music has taken a turn towards worship music, which has turned into a lot of bands and those types of sounds.

I remember a time when I would hear a band and then want to hear everything that sounded like it;