But rules cannot substitute for character.

The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.

I believe that the general growth in large [financial] institutions have occurred in the context of an underlying structure of markets in which many of the larger risks are dramatically -- I should say, fully -- hedged.

Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.