Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design . . . The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.

It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.

It is possible that people need to believe they are unmanaged if they are to be managed effectively.

But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated.

The fully planned economy, so far from being unpopular, is warmly regarded by those who know it best.