Credit default swap gives you something to do. You can buy some credit default swaps from them to protect yourself against the bankruptcy of people who owe you money.

To one American family out of four, the idea of capitalism as a benign system of comfort , dignity , and personal advance is only a myth , or worse, a bitter mockery.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

Labor wants pride and joy in doing good work, a sense of making or doing something beautiful or useful - to be treated with dignity and respect as brother and sister.

Unintended Consequences is full of substance, it is one of the must-read books of the year, and once I finish it I will be giving it a second read through right away.

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.

The share of income that small business people are paying in taxes is the lowest it has been in 65 years - since Obama has cut taxes 18 or 22 times for small business.

Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.

Economic controversy is generally a thankless task. You cannot hope to make any impression on your opponent. Yet he is the only reader on whose interest you can count.

The Treatise tries to analyze not only modern Western families, but also those in other cultures and the changes in family structure during the past several centuries.

Even before I came to Chicago, I had gotten interested in the existence of dispersion of prices under conditions which economic theory said would yield a single price.

Portfolio theory, as used by most financial planners, recommends that you diversify with a balance of stocks and bonds and cash that's suitable to your risk tolerance.

How much there is I want to do! I always feel that I haven't time to accomplish what I wish. I want to read much. I wanted to write a great deal. I want to make money.

But my shift to the serious study of economics gradually weakened my belief in Major Douglas's A+B theorem, which was replaced in my thought by the expression MV = PT.

I am for a close global association in trade and financial matters, rather than the opposite possibility of excessive nationalism, as manifested in the two world wars.

We shall have a race of men who are strong on telemetry and space communications but who cannot read anything but a blueprint or write anything but a computer program.

Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

There is no upside for the U.K. in Brexit. Only costs that can be avoided and advantages to be seized by remaining in Europe. No one should have to pay the Brexit tax.

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.

That the powers of labour, and of the other instruments which produce wealth, may be indefinitely increased by using their products as the means of further production.

The general message is about a bigger global integrated economy is going to lead to faster growth, that policy could improve efficiency by getting more research going.

Good law includes a commitment to transparency and an insistence that no person or entity with a conflict of interest should have influence on public policy decisions.

People are reasonably good at estimating how things add up, but for compounding, which involved repeated multiplication, we fail to appreciate how quickly things grow.

People are less likely to think it's immoral to walk away from their home if they know others who have done so. And if enough people do it, the stigma begins to erode.

I think we do need to try to not just rely on the central bank to, in its wisdom, adjust interest rates, but allow for people to avoid being exposed to inflation risk.

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.

The domestic life of most classes is relatively shabby, as compared with the éclat of that overt portion of their life that is carried on before the eyes of observers.

Most Americans, who think Congress has a right to do anything for which they can get a majority vote, ignore the clearly written constitutional restraints on Congress.

we often observe that there is abundance of capital to be had at low rates of interest, while there are also large numbers of artisans starving for want of employment.

A spade may be made of any size, and if the same number of strokes be made in the hour, the requisite exertion will vary nearly as the cube of the length of the blade.

In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old.

I used the so-called Laffer Curve all the time in my classes and with anyone else who would listen to me to illustrate the trade-off between tax rates and tax revenues.

Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal.

In some settings, however, rampant opportunistic behavior severely limits what can be done jointly without major investments in monitoring and sanctioning arrangements.

Young women who live in areas with high maternal mortality change their behavior less in response to HIV than young women who live in areas with low maternal mortality.

Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?

Perhaps even more than elsewhere current notions of what is desirable and practicable are here still of a kind which may well produce the opposite of what they promise.

The state spends much time and effort persuading the public that it is not really what it is and that the consequences of its actions are positive rather than negative.

More paper money cannot make a society richer, of course, it is just more printed-paper. Otherwise why is it that there are still poor countries and poor people around?

Since our economy is closely allied with that of foreign countries, not one of us can be indifferent to what consequences these disturbances can have at home and abroad

The trust institutions have in the marketplace, the confidence customers and suppliers and workers and employees have, are very important to a business's effectiveness.

Whence it is evident that the remedy must be adapted to the particular cause of the mischief; consequently, the cause must be ascertained, before the remedy is devised.

One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.

We have a swarm of people in the stock market - not out of knowledge, not out of expectation, but out of basically a gambling instinct, the hope that prices will go up.

The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.

In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue - it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.

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