A prolonged and massive increase in aggregate wealth per capita has taken place over several centuries.

Specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control.

The dreams of "leaving it up to the market" or of returning to a politically neutral gold standard cannot succeed because the nature of the monetary system has a profound impact on the interests of powerful groups and states. Affected groups and states will always try to intervene in the operation of the system to make it serve their interests.

In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.

The opposing tendencies of concentration and spread are of little consequence in the liberal model of political economy.

Liberal economists conceive of societies as black boxes connected by exchange rates; as long as exchange rates are correct, what goes on inside the black box is regarded as not very important.

A market is not politically neutral; its existence creates economic power which one actor can use against another.