For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last.

The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

I think the role of the Federal Reserve is enormously exaggerated.

Then came the second Amsterdam discovery, although the principle was known elsewhere. Bank deposits...did not need to be left idly in the bank. They could be lent. The bank then got interest. The borrower then had a deposit that he could spend. But the original deposit still stood to the credit of the original depositor. That too could be spent. Money, spendable money, had been created. Let no one rub his or her eyes. It's still being done-every day. The creation of money by a bank is as simple as this, so simple, I've often said, that the mind is slightly repelled.

One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.

If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale

Broadly speaking, Keynesianism means that the government has a specific responsibility for the behavior of the economy, that it doesn't work on its own autonomous course, but the government, when there's a recession, compensates by employment, by expansion of purchasing power, and in boom times corrects by being a restraining force. But it controls the great flow of demand into the economy, what since Keynesian times has been the flow of aggregate demand. That was the basic idea of Keynes so far as one can put it in a couple of sentences.