If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.

You really struggle to be a successful empire if you are also the world's biggest debtor.

Why did the Germans and Japanese keep fighting after 1943 when every rational hope of victory had disappeared?

From the earliest days, the Rothschilds appreciated the importance of proximity to politicians, the men who determined not only the extent of budget deficits but also the domestic and foreign policies.

No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.

In Stalin's Russia racial persecution was often disguised as class warfare. More than 1.5 million members of ethnic minorities died as a result of forced resettlement.

The Armenian genocide showed what could happen when empires were beaten into nations.