In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.

Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state.

All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

The spirit should never grow old.