Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.

For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content.

I am not political. It is not my job. But I would be happy if politicians could read my work and draw some conclusions from it.

We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

Das Kapital, I think, is very difficult to read, and for me, it was not very influential.

Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so they dont even talk - sometimes not even with their girlfriend or boyfriend or friends - about what they are doing.

Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.