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.
John Kenneth GalbraithThere is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations.
John Kenneth GalbraithLiberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
John Kenneth GalbraithThe traveler to the United States will do wellto prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.
John Kenneth GalbraithIf we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.
John Kenneth GalbraithHermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspectionand interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism.
John Kenneth Galbraith