I'm A Better Economist Than I Was

History Demonstrates That Participants In Financial Markets Are Susceptible To Waves Of Optimism. Excessive Optimism Shows The Seeds Of Its Own Reversal In The Form Of Imbalances That Tend To Grow Over Time.

Given Our Inevitably Incomplete Knowledge About Key Structural Aspects Of Our Ever-changing Economy And The Sometimes Asymmetric Costs Or Benefits Of Particular Outcomes, A Central Bank... Need To Consider Not Only The Most Likely Future Path For The Economy But Also The Distribution Of Possible Outcomes About That Path. They Then Need To Reach A Judgment About The Probabilities, Costs, And Benefits Of The Various Possible Outcomes Under Alternative Choices For Policy.

I've Been In And Out Of Wall Street Since 1949, And I've Never Seen The Type Of Animosity Between Government And Wall Street. And I'm Not Sure Where It Comes From, But I Suspect It's Got To Do With A General Schism In This Society Which Is Really Becoming Ever More Destructive.

...our Market System Depends Critically On Trust-trust In The Word Of Our Colleagues And Trust In The Word Of Those With Whom We Do Business.

It's Hard To Overemphasize How Important Ford's Deregulation Was. True, Most Of The Benefits Took Years To Unfold-rail Freight Rates, For Example Hardly Budged At First. Yet Deregulation Set The Stage For An Enormous Wave Of Creative Destruction In The 1980s.