Blaming speculators as a response to financial crisis goes back at least to the Greeks. It's almost always the wrong response.

Many children are taught to believe in God. I came to believe in the power of systems analysis.

We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises.

One of those disturbing tendencies in academic life is that there is a desire on the part of many in the name of open-mindedness to fall into a kind of relativistic denialism in which all positions are equally legitimate, all positions must be respected, and compromise must be entered into no matter what the starting point or reasonableness of the two parties.

All taxes discourage something. Why not discourage bad things like pollution rather than good things like working?

Start with the idea that you can't repeal the laws of economics. Even if they are inconvenient.

The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated.