Economic Theory Quotes

The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics.

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.

Interest rates are to asset prices what gravity is to the apple. When there are low interest rates, there is a very low gravitational pull on asset prices.

If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist.

The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.

The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.

In the long run we are all dead.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

A potentially useful property of forecasts based on cointegration is that when extended some way ahead, the forecasts of the two series will form a constant ratio, as is expected by some asymptotic economic theory.

If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money.

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. ... because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending.

'Reinventing the Bazaar,' by John McMillan, is a great and fun introduction to the wild variety and importance of markets throughout history and around the world. I finally understood how a Middle Eastern souk actually works economically and how to compare that to modern-day telecom-spectrum auctions. I love that book.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

The perennial gale of creative destruction

It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory.

I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes

Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species

Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.

Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous.

The major reason for Keynes's rejection of communism was simply that he could scarcely identify with the grubby proletariat.

We are all Keynesians now.

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none.

I'm a conservative and I believe if you tax something more you get less of it.

The slogan that agriculture is the backbone of the nation still remains in theory and not in practice.