To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.

Let’s begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes - indeed, deletes - the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.

The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products.

Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

Monetary policy suffers from the unfortunate absence of any occult effect. It has long been clear that economic management...would be greatly facilitated if resort could occasionally be had to witchcraft.

Those who had been riding the upward wave decide now is the time to get out. Those who thought the increase would be forever find their illusion destroyed abruptly, and they, also, respond to the newly revealed reality by selling or trying to sell. And thus the rule, supported by the experience of centuries: the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang.

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.