“People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward.”

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.

If we are dealing with psychology, then the thermometers one uses to measure it have an effect.

I came to a stark realization: chronic surpluses could be almost as destabilizing as chronic deficits.

They then need to reach a judgment about the probabilities, costs, and benefits of the various possible outcomes under alternative choices for policy.

A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage.

The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan of Nature is so immense, but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to the Infinite?

The mind cannot long play the heart’s role.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

I cannot conceive of a politically feasible solution to this problem which will overdo cutting the deficit, where overdoing means harming the economy. It might be technically possible, but it is not realistic.

Justice is such a fine thing that we cannot pay too dearly for it.

Nowadays, anyone who cannot speak English and is incapable of using the Internet is regarded as backward.

You cannot play with fire.

We cannot complain to the possibility.