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.
John Kenneth GalbraithPeople of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
John Kenneth GalbraithIn central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.
John Kenneth GalbraithThe seminar in economic theory conducted by Hayek at the L.S.E. in the 1930s was attended, it came to seem, by all of the economists of my generation - Nicky Kaldor , Thomas Balogh, L. K. Jah, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, the list could be indefinitely extended. The urge to participate (and correct Hayek) was ruthlessly competitive.
John Kenneth GalbraithThe years of the Great Depression were a superb time for economists because people not knowing what could be done or what should be done would always assume that maybe an economist had the answer. If you were just a lawyer in Washington, you were nobody. But if you were an economist, you might have the answer.
John Kenneth Galbraith