"If the American government can't stand behind the dollar, the world's benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts, the largest self-imposed financial disaster in history."

"The idea of confidence, of the emotions of the population, is an incredibly important one in economics. John Maynard Keynes called it 'animal spirit.' And if people are feeling generally good about the future, they're more likely to spend money, to start new companies; companies are more likely to hire people, make investments."

"Holiday binge-buying has deep roots in American culture: department stores have been associating turkey gluttony with its spending equivalent since they began sponsoring Thanksgiving Day parades in the early 20th century."

"The economics profession advances by one confusing financial disaster at a time."

"The word is a force you cannot see, but you can see the manifestation of that force, the expression of the word, which is your own life."

"Bureaucracy, the gigantic power set in motion by dwarves, was thus born."

"By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth."

"If you put a ten dollar bill under the rug instead of spending it, that is capital formation. It represents ten dollars' worth of something that might have been immediately consumed, but wasn't."