stevedtrm/economics

Some highly interesting quotes here:



This statement makes me think of "JUST WAR THEORY" as misapplied to the Iraq and Afghan Wars.



* When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble â€" until the day of disaster.
o Quoted in Ben Laurance and William Keegan, "Galbraith on crashes, Japan and Walking Sticks," The Observer (1998-06-21)



Another superb quote:-



* Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes â€" indeed, deletes â€" the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.



* The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.
o A History of Economics (1991), ch. 21



* People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
o The Guardian (UK, 1992-05-23)



There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.



The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

* The Guardian (UK, 1992-05-23)

From the page: "I'd like to say a few words about the futility of work. I'm serious."

Competition is the ultimate divide and conquer.: "It showed that, even in a market like this one with very few players, collusion is difficult to maintain. There are tremendous incentives for one or more parties to cheat and move the market toward a competitive outcome. "

Some one finally said it in a mainstream journal.: "When Congress raises some other tax and/or cuts a useful programme, people should know that there was a better alternative. It just didn't happen because, as we know, the banks own the place."

Russia angry, apparently over western contol over a global bribery mechanism called the IMF.