Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A bank needs models to measure risk. The problem, however, is that any one bank can measure its risk, but it also has to know what the risk taken by other banks in the system happens to be at any particular moment.
Having spent 10 years studying emerging markets, I know that you have patterns repeated over and over again. A bubble is like a fire which needs oxygen to continue... when you see there is no oxygen, things change.
The public subsidies provided to miners, loggers, and ranchers are as extravagant and as harmful to the public interest as the subsidies that the Federal Reserve and Treasury provide to the 'banks too big to fail.'
Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism, which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.
My number-one recommendation is to invest in people. Humans that are well trained are the inputs into this discovery process. And there's big opportunities still, I think, to do a better job of investing in people.
Many Americans say they want to be organ donors, but they just don't get around to acting on their intentions. Helping these potential good Samaritans overcome their inertia could prolong thousands of lives a year.
Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.
The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.
Theories of "natural law" and the "law of nations" are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. [...] "Natural law" is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves[....]
Government income redistribution programs produce the same result as theft. In fact, that's what a thief does; he redistributes income. The difference between government and thievery is mostly a matter of legality.
I guess some of the most delightful moments of my teenage years were when I was trying not just to educate myself but trying to educate others. And I could see how the lives of children could be transformed in that.
Evolutionary psychologists suggest that humans experienced evolutionary benefits from brain developments that included aversion to loss and risk and from instincts for cooperation that helped strengthen communities.
When it came time to go to college, I had been accepted for Harvard when my father was offered the position of head of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company office on the west coast, and we moved to San Francisco.
Much of what I do in my job is think about whether relationships we see in data are causal, as opposed to just reflecting correlations. It's exactly these issues which come up in evaluating studies in public health.
There's quite a bit of evidence that even professionals don't show any ability to pick stocks or to predict market rollbacks. Most of the people we identify as skilled based on returns have probably just been lucky.
I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. That seems to be hopeless; once you see that you lose all hope.
That subject has lost its one time appeal to economists as our science has become more abstract, but my interest has even grown more intense as the questions raised by the sociology of science became more prominent.
In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.
Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising.
Redistribution divided society into two social classes: the beneficiaries of transfer, who are calling for ever more; and the victims, who submit unwillingly. It could hardly fail to injure social peace and harmony.
Joel Waldfogel is one of the smartest and funniest economists on the planet. I think of him every time I start to unwrap a present. Buy Scroogenomics for your friends and family. It makes the perfect Christmas gift.
Intelligent design cannot explain Darwinian evolution. Darwin's whole point is that variation and change are random and without higher purpose. We cannot imagine that God designed this disproof of His own existence.
People share a universal behavioural trait: if there are profits to be made, the effort to get that money will attract investment. This is true in the private sector, the market sector, as well as the public sector.
Demand and supply are the opposite extremes of the beam, whence depend the scales of dearness and cheapness; the price is the point of equilibrium, where the momentum of the one ceases, and that of the other begins.
Dominion by land or sea will appear equally destitute of attraction, when it comes to be generally understood, that all its advantages rest with the rulers, and that the subjects at large derive no benefit whatever.
Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice.
The benefits of growth have not trickled down. Income inequalities have become one of the biggest global challenges, attracting growing attention not only in academic literature but also among policymakers globally.
I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind
Showing kindness causes oxytocin release in the recipient that motives him or her to be kind to others. You can start this virtuous cycle in the simplest ways, for example, by giving someone a hug. I send you a hug!
We have fluctuations all the time, business cycles, and they come about in various ways, but normally what sets them off is some reduction in the willingness of our population, our businesses, and foreigners to buy.
Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
Politicians are forever coming up with 'solutions' to virtually every imaginable imperfection in life. But, if we give them more power and more of our money, we are very unlikely to end up better off on net balance.
The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.
After a Canadian has been referred to a specialist, the waiting list for gynecological surgery is four to 12 weeks, cataract removal 12 to 18 weeks, tonsillectomy three to 36 weeks and neurosurgery five to 30 weeks.
Reduced employment opportunities is one effect of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the disadvantaged members of our society. The only moral thing to do is to repeal it.
Whenever there's a tragedy involving gun use, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the gun-control lobby and the news media seize it as another opportunity to exploit the emotions of uninformed American people for political gain.
Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at truth are among the first requisites of discovery; but the erroneous guesses must almost of necessity be many times as numerous as those which prove well founded.
When you look at the world, everyone in the world who cares about his or her family wants to have a major portion of their assets in the United States because we are the growth country and the freedom loving country.
House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.
I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained. The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict.
During the period of capital moving from one employment to another, the profits on that to which capital is flowing will be relatively high, but will continue so no longer than till the requisite capital is obtained.
It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property. The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.
While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.
A Swedish physicist can not discuss his work with fifty people unless he goes abroad. A Swedish economist can get opinions and instructions in his native language from thousands upon thousands of his fellow citizens.
The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries.
For my own part, I did not see and did not appreciate what the risks were with securitization, the credit ratings agencies, the shadow banking system, the S.I.V.’s — I didn’t see any of that coming until it happened.
Access to capital is important for all firms, but it's particularly vital for startups and young firms, which often lack a sufficient stream of earnings to increase employment and internally finance capital spending.
In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.