A very complicated mass of things influences the economy - the speculative effect, government policy, consumer borrowing and spending, the level of technical innovation (which I concede, although everyone emphasizes it too much), and much more - including, of course, the rate of inflation.

I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit.

The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.

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

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.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover either for grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much-cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future.