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What Central Banks Can Control Is A Base And One Way They Can Control The Base Is Via Manipulating A Particular Interest Rate, Such As A Federal Funds Rate, The Overnight Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another. But They Use That Control To Control What Happens To The Quantity Of Money. There Is No Disagreement.

-Milton Friedman

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What Central Banks Can

Milton Friedman

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What Central Banks Can Control Is A Base And One Way They Can Control The Base Is Via Manipulating A Particular Interest Rate, Such As A Federal Funds Rate, The Overnight Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another. But They Use That Control To Control What Happens To The Quantity Of Money. There Is No Disagreement.

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History Suggests That Capitalism Is A Necessary Condition For Political Freedom. Clearly It Is Not A Sufficient Condition.

Richard Nixon Was A Very Intelligent And Able Man. And He Had The Right Ideas. But He Did Not Have The Adherence To Principles That [ronald] Reagan Had. He Did Some Very Good Things. We Owe To Richard Nixon The Volunteer Army - He Got Rid Of The Draft. And That Was A Major Increase In Freedom.

How Can Thinking People Believe That A Government That Cannot Deliver The Mail Can Deliver Gas Better Than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, And The Rest?

When You Argue For Free Markets, You Are Arguing Against The Trend.

The Long-range Sloution To High Unemployment Is To Increase The Incentive For Ordinary People To Save, Invest, Work, And Employ Others. We Make It Costly For Employers To Employ People; We Subsidize People Not To Go To Work We Have A System That Increasingly Taxes Work And Subsidizes Nonwork.

The Argument For Collectivism Is Simple; Free Market Is Not.

There's Nothing That Does So Much Harm As Good Intentions.

It Is My View That What Is Important Is Cutting Government Spending, However Spending Is Financed. A So-called Deficit Is A Disguised And Hidden Form Of Taxation. The Real Burden On The Public Is What Government Spends (and Mandates Others To Spend). As I Have Said Repeatedly, I Would Rather Have Government Spend One Trillion Dollars With A Deficit Of A Half A Trillion Than Have Government Spend Two Trillion Dollars With No Deficit.

I Do Not Believe There Is A Natural Resource Economics. I Believe There Is Good Economics And Bad Economics.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them.

Not All Schooling Is Education Nor All Education, Schooling.

The History Of Mankind Is The History Of Money Losing Value.

Inflation Is Taxation Without Legislation.

I Know Of No Severe Depression, In Any Country Or Any Time, That Was Not Accompanied By A Sharp Decline In The Stock Of Money, And Equally Of No Sharp Decline In The Stock Of Money That Was Not Accompanied By A Severe Depression.

Economic Freedom Is An Essential Requisite For Political Freedom. By Enabling People To Cooperate With One Another Without Coercion Or Central Direction, It Reduces The Area Over Which Political Power Is Exercised.

Nobody Spends Somebody Else's Money As Carefully As He Spends His Own.

Economy And Economics

You Mustn't Judge A Politician By Talk. You Have To Judge Them By Performance.

Freedom In Economic Arrangements Is Itself A Component Of Freedom Broadly Understood, So Economic Freedom Is An End In Itself ... Economic Freedom Is Also An Indispensable Means Toward The Achievement Of Political Freedom.

How Can We Keep The Government We Create From Becoming A Frankenstein That Will Destroy The Very Freedom We Establish It To Protect? Freedom Is A Rare And Delicate Plant.

Because It Is One Thing To Have Free Immigration To Jobs. It Is Another Thing To Have Free Immigration To Welfare. And You Cannot Have Both. If You Have A Welfare State, If You Have A State In Which Every Resident Is Promises A Certain Minimal Level Of Income, Or A Minimum Level Of Subsistence, Regardless Of Whether He Works Or Not, Produces It Or Not. Then It Really Is An Impossible Thing.

Impossible Things

If You Put The Federal Government In Charge Of The Sahara Desert, In 5 Years There'd Be A Shortage Of Sand.

The Government Solution To A Problem Is Usually As Bad As The Problem.

Economic Freedom Is ... An Indispensable Means Toward The Achievement Of Political Freedom.

Concentrated Power Is Not Rendered Harmless By The Good Intentions Of Those Who Create It.

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

Economists May Not Know Much. But We Know One Thing Very Well: How To Produce Surpluses And Shortages. Do You Want A Surplus? Have The Government Legislate A Minimum Price That Is Above The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail. That Is What We Have Done At One Time Or Another To Produce Surpluses Of Wheat, Of Sugar, Of Butter, Of Many Other Commodities. Do You Want A Shortage? Have The Government Legislate A Maximum Price That Is Below The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail.

"free Markets" Is A Very General Term. There Are All Sorts Of Problems That Will Emerge. Free Markets Work Best When The Transaction Between Two Individuals Affects Only Those Individuals. Most Often, A Transaction Between You And Me Affects A Third Party. That Is The Source Of All Problems For Government. That Is The Source Of All Pollution Problems, Of The Inequality Problem. This Reality Ensures That The End Of History Will Never Come.

Personal Freedom Has Grown Greatly Within China, And That Will Provoke Ever More Points Of Conflict Between The Individual And State.

Because We Live In A Largely Free Society, We Tend To Forget How Limited Is The Span Of Time And The Part Of The Globe For Which There Has Ever Been Anything Like Political Freedom: The Typical State Of Mankind Is Tyranny, Servitude, And Misery.

The Invisible Hand In Politics Operates In The Opposite Direction To The Invisible Hand In The Market.

Every Person Shall Be Free To Do Good ' At His Own Expense.

So The Question Is, Do Corporate Executives, Provided They Stay Within The Law, Have Responsibilities In Their Business Activities Other Than To Make As Much Money For Their Stockholders As Possible? And My Answer To That Is, No They Do Not.

The Argument For Collectivism Is Simple If False; It Is An Immediate Emotional Argument. The Argument For Individualism Is Subtle And Sophisticated; It Is An Indirect Rational Argument. And The Emotional Faculties Are More Highly Developed In Most Men Than The Rational, Paradoxically Or Especially Even In Those Who Regard Themselves As Intellectuals.

Universities Exist To Transmit Knowledge And Understanding Of Ideas And Values To Students Not To Provide Entertainment For Spectators Or Employment For Athletes.

I Can Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else. And If I Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else, I'm Not Concerned About How Much It Is, And I'm Not Concerned About What I Get. And That's Government.

If Capitalism Worked As The Socialists Think An Economic System Ought To Work, And Provided A Constant Equality Of Living Conditions For All, Regardless Of Whether A Man Was Able Or Not, Resourceful Or Not, Diligent Or Not, Thrifty Or Not, If Capitalism Put No Premiums On Resourcefulness And Effort And Not Penalty On Idleness Or Vice, It Would Produce Only An Equality Of Destitution.

George Stigler Was A Delightful Correspondent. In A Letter From London In 1948, After Remarking On The Inconvertibility Of The Pound And The Inedible, Still-rationed Food, He Concluded, "so Here I Am Losing Weight And Gaining Pounds.

I'm Not In Favor Of No Government. You Do Need A Government. But By Doing So Many Things That The Government Has No Business Doing, It Cannot Do Those Things Which It Alone Can Do Well. There's No Other Institution In My Opinion That Can Provide Us With Protection Of Our Life And Liberty. However, The Government Performs That Basic Function Poorly Today, Precisely Because It Is Devoting Too Much Of Its Efforts And Spending Too Much Of Our Income On Things Which Are Harmful. So I Have No Doubt That That's The Major Single Problem We Face.

What Is Not Forbidden In Sweden, Is Obligatory.

Cutting Government Spending And Government Intrusion In The Economy Will Almost Surely Involve Immediate Gain For The Many, Short-term Pain For The Few, And Long-term Gain For All.

They Think That The Cure To Big Government Is To Have Bigger Government... The Only Effective Cure Is To Reduce The Scope Of Government - Get Government Out Of The Business.

If You Have Free Immigration, In The Way We Had It Before 1914, Everybody Benefited. The People Who Were Here Benefited. The People Who Came Benefited. Because Nobody Would Come Unless He, Or His Family, Thought He Would Do Better Here Than He Would Elsewhere. And, The New Immigrants Provided Additional Resources, Provided Additional Possibilities For The People Already Here. So Everybody Can Mutually Benefit.

As A Nation, We Have Been Responsible For The Murder Of Literally Hundreds Of Thousands Of People At Home And Abroad By Fighting A War That Should Never Have Been Started And Can Be Won, If At All, Only By Converting The United States Into A Police State.

The Lesson For Asia Is; If You Have A Central Bank, Have A Floating Exchange Rate; If You Want To Have A Fixed Exchange Rate, Abolish Your Central Bank And Adopt A Currency Board Instead. Either Extreme; A Fixed Exchange Rate Through A Currency Board, But No Central Bank, Or A Central Bank Plus Truly Floating Exchange Rates; Either Of Those Is A Tenable Arrangement. But A Pegged Exchange Rate With A Central Bank Is A Recipe For Trouble.

[t]he Burden Of Government Is Not Measured By How Much It Taxes, But By How Much It Spends.

With Some Notable Exceptions, Businessmen Favor Free Enterprise In General But Are Opposed To It When It Comes To Themselves.

There Is Likely To Be A Lag Between The Need For Action And Government ["an Individual's" Or "a Team's"] Recognition Of The Need; A Further Lag Between Recognition Of The Need For Action And The Taking Of Action; And A Still Further Lag Between The Action And Its Effects

For One Thing, There Are Many "inventions" That Are Not Patentable. The "inventor" Of The Supermarket, For Example, Conferred Great Benefits On His Fellowmen For Which He Could Not Charge Them. Insofar As The Same Kind Of Ability Is Required For The One Kind Of Invention As For The Other, The Existence Of Patents Tends To Divert Activity To Patentable Inventions.

In The Current World, With The Skills Needed, Dropouts [like No Secondary Education] Are Condemned To Being Members Of The Underclass. In My View, This Is A Fault Of The American School System, Which Is A Government Monopoly.

No Central Banker Would Disagree With The Proposition That Inflation Is Primarily A Monetary Phenomenon. Not One Of Them Will Disagree That Every Inflation Has Been Accompanied By A Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money And Every Deflation By A Decline In The Quantity Of Money.

Governments Never Learn. Only People Learn.

You Cannot Be Sure That You Are Right Unless You Understand The Arguments Against Your Views Better Than Your Opponents Do.

I Think It's A Scandal What Has Been Happening In The School System So Far As Lower Income Classes. The Dropout Rates, The Illiteracy Rate, You Know Literacy In The United States Was A Lot Higher In 1890 Than It Is Now.

We Do Not Influence The Course Of Events By Persuading People That We Are Right When We Make What They Regard As Radical Proposals. Rather, We Exert Influence By Keeping Options Available When Something Has To Be Done At A Time Of Crisis.

Times Of Crisis

You Cannot Simultaneously Have Free Immigration And A Welfare State.

There Is One And Only One Responsibility Of Business: To Use Its Resources And Engage In Activities Designed To Increase Its Profits So Long As It Stays Within The Rules Of The Game.

I Am In Favor Of Cutting Taxes Under Any Circumstances And For Any Excuse, For Any Reason, Whenever It's Possible. ... Because I Believe The Big Problem Is Not Taxes, The Big Problem Is Spending.

The Power To Determine The Quantity Of Money... Is Too Important, Too Pervasive, To Be Exercised By A Few People, However Public-spirited, If There Is Any Feasible Alternative. There Is No Need For Such Arbitrary Power.

You Had A Flood Of Immigrants, Millions Of Them, Coming To This Country. What Brought Them Here? It Was The Hope For A Better Life For Them And Their Children. And, In The Main, They Succeeded. It Is Hard To Find Any Century In History, In Which So Large A Number Of People Experience So Great An Improvement In The Conditions Of Their Life, In The Opportunities Open To Them, As In The Period Of The 19th And Early 20th Century.

In This Day And Age, We Need To Revise The Old Saying To Read, "hell Hath No Fury Like A Bureaucrat Scorned.

Hell Hath No Fury

Only Government Can Take Perfectly Good Paper, Cover It With Perfectly Good Ink And Make The Combination Worthless.

A Free Man Will Ask Neither What His Country Can Do For Him Nor What He Can Do For His Country.

There Is Not A Line In 'the Wealth Of Nations' That Is Not Still Applicable To This Day.

Even The Most Ardent Environmentalist Doesn't Really Want To Stop Pollution. If He Thinks About It, And Doesn't Just Talk About It, He Wants To Have The Right Amount Of Pollution. We Can't Really Afford To Eliminate It - Not Without Abandoning All The Benefits Of Technology That We Not Only Enjoy But On Which We Depend.

Unfortunately, Unanimity Is Not Always Feasible.

I Would Say That In This World, The Greatest Source Of Inequality Has Been Special Privileges Granted By Government.

If The Only Motive Was To Help People Who Could Not Afford Education, Advocates Of Government Involvement Would Have Simply Proposed Tuition Subsidies.

I'd Like To Promote Lots Of Things. I'd Like To Promote Elimination Of Drug Prohibition. I'd Like To Promote Parental Choice In Education Through Vouchers. Those Are Two Things I Think Are Very Urgent And Important. They're Both More Important Than The Harm Which Social Security Will Do.

What Works For Sweden Wouldn't Work For France Or Germany Or Italy. In A Small State, You Can Reach Outside For Many Of Your Activities. In A Homogeneous Culture, They Are Willing To Pay Higher Taxes In Order To Achieve Commonly Held Goals. But "common Goals" Are Much Harder To Come By In Larger, More Heterogeneous Populations.

The Great Depression Was Not A Sign Of The Failure Of Monetary Policy Or A Result Of The Failure Of The Market System As Was Widely Interpreted. It Was Instead A Consequence Of A Very Serious Government Failure, In Particular A Failure In The Monetary Authorities To Do What They'd Initially Been Set Up To Do.

Great Depression

The True Test Of Any Scholar's Work Is Not What His Contemporaries Say, But What Happens To His Work In The Next 25 Or 50 Years.

We Have A Freer World Because Of The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Changes In China. Those Two Have Been The Main Contributors To Freedom In Our Time.

If You Cannot State A Proposition Clearly And Unambiguously, You Do Not Understand It.

The Only Relevant Test Of The Validity Of A Hypothesis Is Comparison Of Prediction With Experience.

A Society That Aims For Equality Before Liberty Will End Up With Neither Equality Nor Liberty. And A Society That Aims First For Liberty Will Not End Up With Equality, But It Will End Up With A Closer Approach To Equality Than Any Other Kind Of System That Has Ever Been Developed.

Rapid Increases In The Quantity Of Money Produce Inflation. Sharp Decreases Produce Depression.

The Price Works So Well, So Efficiently, That We Are Not Aware Of It Most Of The Time.

The Use Of Quantity Of Money As A Target Has Not Been A Success. I'm Not Sure That I Would As Of Today Push It As Hard As I Once Did.

The Case Against A Fully Independent Central Bank Is Strong Indeed.

Government Is A Way By Which Every Individual Believes He Can Live At The Expense Of Everybody Else.

Society Doesn't Have Values. People Have Values.

When A Man Spends His Own Money To Buy Something For Himself, He Is Very Careful About How Much He Spends And How He Spends It. When A Man Spends His Own Money To Buy Something For Someone Else, He Is Still Very Careful About How Much He Spends, But Somewhat Less What He Spends It On. When A Man Spends Someone Else's Money To Buy Something For Himself, He Is Very Careful About What He Buys, But Doesn't Care At All How Much He Spends. And When A Man Spends Someone Else's Money On Someone Else, He Does't Care How Much He Spends Or What He Spends It On. And That's Government For You.

I Am Convinced That The Minimum-wage Law Is The Most Anti-negro Law On Our Statute Books In Its Effect, Not Its Intent.

You Never Can Cure Poverty. Poverty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder.

There's No Doubt In My Mind That Ronald Reagan Was By Far The Greatest. Because He Had Real Principles And He Stuck By Them. He Made Clear What He Was Going To Do, And He Did It. He Didn't Back Down.

I Say Thank God For Government Waste. If Government Is Doing Bad Things, It's Only The Waste That Prevents The Harm From Being Greater.

If China Don't Free Up The Political Side, Its Economic Growth Will Come To An End - While It Is Still At A Very Low Level.

What Kind Of Society Isn't Structured On Greed?

Germany Has A Very Able And Productive Workforce. It Has High-quality Products That Are Valued All Over The World. It Has Every Opportunity To Be A Productive, Growing State. It Just Has To Give Its Entrepreneurs A Chance. It Has To Let Them Make Money, Hire And Fire, And Act Like Entrepreneurs.

Government Power Must Be Dispersed. If Government Is To Exercise Power, Better In The County Than In The State, Better In The State Than In Washington. If I Do Not Like What My Local Community Does, Be It In Sewage Disposal, Or Zoning, Or Schools, I Can Move To Another Local Community, And Though Few May Take This Step, The Mere Possibility Acts As A Check. If I Do Not Like What Washington Imposes, I Have Few Alternatives In This World Of Jealous Nations.

No Major Institution In The Us Has So Poor A Record Of Performance Over So Long A Period As The Federal Reserve, Yet So High A Public Reputation.

The Problem Of Social Organization Is How To Set Up An Arrangement Under Which Greed Will Do The Least Harm, Capitalism Is That Kind Of A System.

Government Has Three Primary Functions. It Should Provide For Military Defense Of The Nation. It Should Enforce Contracts Between Individuals. It Should Protect Citizens From Crimes Against Themselves Or Their Property. When Government-- In Pursuit Of Good Intentions Tries To Rearrange The Economy, Legislate Morality, Or Help Special Interests, The Cost Come In Inefficiency, Lack Of Motivation, And Loss Of Freedom. Government Should Be A Referee, Not An Active Player.

Hong Kong Is The Bellwether. If The Chinese Stick To Their Agreement To Let Hong Kong Go Its Own Path, Then China Will Also Go That Way. If They Don't, That Is A Very Bad Sign. I'm Optimistic.

Look, For Example, At The Obvious, Immediate, Practical Example Of Illegal Mexican Immigration. Now, That Mexican Immigration, Over The Border, Is A Good Thing. It's A Good Thing For The Illegal Immigrants. It's A Good Thing For The United States. It's A Good Thing For The Citizens Of The Country. But, It's Only Good So Long As Its Illegal....

If Freedom Were Not So Economically Efficient It Certainly Wouldn't Stand A Chance.

There Is Only One Social Responsibility Of Business

Social Responsibility

The Free Man Will Ask Neither What His Country Can Do For Him Nor What He Can Do For His Country. He Will Ask Rather 'what Can I And My Compatriots Do Through Government' To Help Us Discharge Our Individual Responsibilities, To Achieve Our Several Goals And Purposes, And Above All, To Protect Our Freedom?

In Response To A Suggestion That Total Free Trade Would End In Cheaper Foreign Products Flooding The Market And Causing Unemployment.

There's No Point In Comparing An Actual, Operating System With An Ideal System That Doesn't Exist.

Operating Systems

Is It Really True That Political Self-interest Is Nobler Somehow Than Economic Self-interest?

There Is No Other Complex Field In Our Society In Which Do-it-yourself Beats Out Factory Production Or Market Production. Nobody Makes His Or Her Own Car. But It Is Still The Case That Parents Can Perform The Job Of Educating Their Children [homeschooling], In Many Cases Better Than Our Present Education System.

Legalizing Drugs Would Simultaneously Reduce The Amount Of Crime And Raise The Quality Of Law Enforcement. Can You Conceive Of Any Other Measure That Would Accomplish So Much To Promote Law And Order?

One Of The Reasons That I Am In Favor Of Less Government Is Because When You Have More Government, Industrialists Take It Over.

What Central Banks Can Control Is A Base And One Way They Can Control The Base Is Via Manipulating A Particular Interest Rate, Such As A Federal Funds Rate, The Overnight Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another. But They Use That Control To Control What Happens To The Quantity Of Money. There Is No Disagreement.

The Black Market Was A Way Of Getting Around Government Controls. It Was A Way Of Enabling The Free Market To Work. It Was A Way Of Opening Up, Enabling People.

Viewed As A Means To The End Of Political Freedom, Economic Arrangements Are Important Because Of Their Effect On The Concentration Or Dispersion Of Power. The Kind Of Economic Organization That Provides Economic Freedom Directly, Namely, Competitive Capitalism, Also Promotes Political Freedom Because It Separates Economic Power From Political Power And In This Way Enables The One To Offset The Other

The Depression, Which Started In 1929 Was Rather Mild From 1929 To 1930. And, Indeed, In My Opinion Would Have Been Over In 1931 At The Latest Had It Not Been That The Federal Reserve Followed A Policy Which Led To Bank Failures, Widespread Bank Failures, And Led To A Reduction In The Quantity Of Money.

Federal Reserve

...theories Should Be Judged By Their Ability To Predict Events Rather Than By The Realism Of Their Assumptions.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon.

Monetary Policy

The Same Thing Will Happen In China That Happened In Chile. Political Freedom Will Ultimately Break Out Of Its Shackles. Tiananmen Square Was Only The First Episode. It Is Headed For A Series Of Tiananmen Squares. It Cannot Continue To Develop Privately And At The Same Time Maintain Its Authoritarian Character Politically. It Is Headed For A Clash. Sooner Or Later, One Or The Other Will Give.

The Existence Of A Free Market Does Not Of Course Eliminate The Need For Government. On The Contrary, Government Is Essential Both As A Forum For Determining The "rule Of The Game" And As An Umpire To Interpret And Enforce The Rules Decided On.

The Power To Determine The Quantity Of Money... Is Too Important, Too Pervasive, To Be Exercised By A Few People, However Public-spirited, If There Is Any Feasible Alternative. There Is No Need For Such Arbitrary Power... Any System Which Gives So Much Power And So Much Discretion To A Few Men, [so] That Mistakes - Excusable Or Not - Can Have Such Far Reaching Effects, Is A Bad System. It Is A Bad System To Believers In Freedom Just Because It Gives A Few Men Such Power Without Any Effective Check By The Body Politic - This Is The Key Political Argument Against An Independent Central Bank.

The Internet Is The Most Effective Instrument We Have For Globalization.

The Countries That Have Risen And Separated Out As A Result Of The Collapse Of The Soviet Union Are, On The Whole, Following Freer Economic Policies. Most Of These States Have Freer Government And Less Restrictions On Trade.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them... He Recognizes No National Goal Except As It Is The Consensus Of The Goals That The Citizens Severally Serve. He Recognizes No National Purpose Except As It Is The Consensus Of The Purposes For Which The Citizens Severally Strive.

...only Physicians Are Likely To Be Regarded As Competent To Judge The Qualifications Of Potential Physicians, So Licensing Boards In The Various States...are Typically Composed..of Physicians,...members Of The Ama. The Boards, Or The State Legislatures...give The Ama The Power To Influence The Number Of Persons Admitted To Practice (by) Lengthy Training,...(and) The List Of 'approved' Schools And Hospitals (which) Is Generally Identical With The List Issued By The Council On Medical Education And Hospitals Of The Ama.

The Current Oil Crisis Has Not Been Produced By The Oil Companies. It Is A Result Of Governmental Mismanagement Exacerbated By The Mideast War.

It's A Moral Problem That The Government Is Making Into Criminals People, Who May Be Doing Something You And I Don't Approve Of, But Who Are Doing Something That Hurts Nobody Else.

You Will Find That Hardly A Soul Who Will Say That It Was A Bad Thing. Almost Everybody Will Say It Was A Good Thing. 'but What About Today? Do You Think We Should Have Free Immigration?' 'oh, No,' They'll Say, 'we Couldn't Possibly Have Free Immigration Today. Why, That Would Flood Us With Immigrants From India, And God Knows Where. We'd Be Driven Down To A Bare Subsistence Level.'

But On The Other Hand, If You Come Under Circumstances Where Each Person Is Entitled To A Pro-rata Share Of The Pot, To Take An Extreme Example, Or Even To A Low Level Of The Pie, Than The Effect Of That Situation Is That Free Immigration, Would Mean A Reduction Of Everybody To The Same, Uniform Level. Of Course, I'm Exaggerating, It Wouldn't Go Quite That Far, But It Would Go In That Direction. And It Is That Perception, That Leads People To Adopt What At First Seems Like Inconsistent Values.

Pick At Random Any Three Letters From The Alphabet, Put Them In Any Order, And You Will Have An Acronym Designating A Federal Agency We Can Do Without.

The Evidence Of History Speaks With A Single Voice. I Do Not Know Any Exception To The Proposition That If You Compare Like With Like, The Freer The System, The Better Off The Ordinary Poor People Have Been.

The Problem In This World Is To Avoid Concentration Of Power - We Must Have A Dispersion Of Power.

Political Leaders In Capitalist Countries Who Cheer The Collapse Of Socialism In Other Countries Continue To Favor Socialist Solutions In Their Own. They Know The Words, But They Have Not Learned The Tune.

There Is No Good Way Of Measuring Poverty.

And Where Are You Going To Get These Angels Who Are Going To Run Society For Us?

China Has Seen A Great Deal Of Economic Progress. It's Certainly Rather Of A Miracle. The Growing Role Of The Market In The Economy Will Force China To Open Up Its Political System Over Time And To Move Toward A More Democratic Society. So Taken As A Whole, The One Real Failure In This Whole Business Has Been Russia.

I'm In Favor Of Legalizing Drugs. According To My Values System, If People Want To Kill Themselves, They Have Every Right To Do So. Most Of The Harm That Comes From Drugs Is Because They Are Illegal.

If You Pay People Not To Work And Tax Them When They Do, Don't Be Surprised If You Get Unemployment.

Now That I'm 60, Every Morning I Look In The Mirror And Say, "i Don't Know Who You Are, Stranger, But I'm Gonna Shave You Anyway".

If A Country Is An Attractive Place For Foreigners To Invest Their Funds, Then That Country Will Have A Relatively High Exchange Rate. If It's An Unattractive Place, It Will Have A Relatively Low Exchange Rate. Those Are The Fundamentals That Determine The Exchange Rate In A Floating Exchange Rate System.

There's A Smokestack On The Back Of Every Government Program.

Government Programs

It Is A Mark Of How Far We Have Gone On The Road To Serfdom That Government Allocation And Rationing Of Oil Is The Automatic Response To The Oil Crisis.

Americans Know Very Little About Social Statistics, But I Am Not Sure That It's Important That Americans Know About Social Statistics.

It Is True That A Competitive Market Is Not The Whole Of Society. A Great Deal Depends On The Qualities Of The Population And The Nation In How They Organize The Non-market Aspects Of Society.

Doing Good With Other People's Money Has Two Basic Flaws. In The First Place, You Never Spend Anybody Else's Money As Carefully As You Spend Your Own. So A Large Fraction Of That Money Is Inevitably Wasted. In The Second Place, And Equally Important, You Cannot Do Good With Other People's Money Unless You First Get The Money Away From Them. So That Force - Sending A Policeman To Take The Money From Somebody's Pocket - Is Fundamentally At The Basis Of The Philosophy Of The Welfare State.

The One Thing That’s Missing, But That Will Soon Be Developed, Is A Reliable E-cash, A Method Whereby On The Internet You Can Transfer Funds From A To B, Without A Knowing B Or B Knowing A.

Individual Price And Wage Changes Will Not Be Prevented. In The Main, Price Changes Will Simply Be Concealed By Taking The Form Of Changes In Discounts, Service, And Quality, And Wage Changes, In Overtime, Perquisites And So On…. But To Whatever Extent The Freeze Is Enforced, It Will Do Harm By Distorting Relative Prices.

To Really Understand Something You've Got To Reduce It To Its Principles.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them. He Is Proud Of A Common Heritage And Loyal To Common Traditions. But He Regards Government As A Means, An Instrumentality, Neither A Grantor Of Favors And Gifts, Nor A Master Or God To Be Blindly Worshipped And Served.

Significant Changes In The Growth Rate Of Money Supply, Even Small Ones, Impact The Financial Markets First. Then, They Impact Changes In The Real Economy, Usually In Six To Nine Months, But In A Range Of Three To 18 Months. Usually In About Two Years In The Us, They Correlate With Changes In The Rate Of Inflation Or Deflation." "the Leads Are Long And Variable, Though The More Inflation A Society Has Experienced, History Shows, The Shorter The Time Lead Will Be Between A Change In Money Supply Growth And The Subsequent Change In Inflation.

Significant Change

What Happened Was That For Every $100 Of Money, By Which I Mean The Cash That People Keep In Their Pockets, And The Deposits They Have In The Bank, For Every $100 Of Money That There Was In 1929, By 1933 There Was Only $67. The Federal Reserve Allowed The Quantity Of Money To Decline By A Third. While, At All Times, It Had The Possibilities And The Power Of Preventing That From Happening.

The Facts Never Speak For Themselves. They Have To Be Interpreted In Terms Of Some Understanding Of Where They Come From And What The Relation Between Them Is.

The Broader And More Influential Organisations Of Businessmen Have Acted To Undermine The Basic Foundation Of The Free Market System They Purport To Represent And Defend.

When They So-called 'target The Interest Rate', What They're Doing Is Controlling The Money Supply Via The Interest Rate. The Interest Rate Is Only An Intermediary Instrument.

The Only Way That Has Ever Been Discovered To Have A Lot Of People Cooperate Together Voluntarily Is Through The Free Market. And That's Why It's So Essential To Preserving Individual Freedom.

So Long As It Stays Within The Rules Of The Game, Which Is To Say, Engages In Open And Free Competition Without Deception Or Fraud.

Few Trends Could So Thoroughly Undermine The Very Foundations Of Our Free Society As The Acceptance By Corporate Officials Of A Social Responsibility Other Than To Make As Much Money For Their Stockholders As Possible.

The Great Danger To The Consumer Is The Monopoly -whether Private Or Governmental. His Most Effective Protection Is Free Competition At Home And Free Trade Throughout The World. The Consumer Is Protected From Being Exploited By One Seller By The Existence Of Another Seller From Whom He Can Buy And Who Is Eager To Sell To Him. Alternative Sources Of Supply Protect The Consumer Far More Effectively Than All The Ralph Naders Of The World.

The Fed Was Largely Responsible For Converting What Might Have Been A Garden-variety Recession, Although Perhaps A Fairly Severe One, Into A Major Catastrophe. Instead Of Using Its Powers To Offset The Depression, It Presided Over A Decline In The Quantity Of Money By One-third From 1929 To 1933 ... Far From The Depression Being A Failure Of The Free-enterprise System, It Was A Tragic Failure Of Government.

The Growing Role That The Government Has Played In Financing And Administering Schooling Has Led Not Only The Enormous Waste Of Taxpayers Money But Also To A Far Poorer Educational System.

I Am Myself Persuaded, On The Basis Of Extensive Study Of The Historical Evidence, That... The Severity Of Each Of The Contractions - 1920-21, 1929-33, And 1937-38 - Is Directly Attributable To Acts Of Commission And Omission By The Reserve Authorities And Would Not Have Occurred Under Earlier Monetary And Banking Arrangements.

The Benefits Of A Tariff Are Visible. Union Workers Can See They Are "protected". The Harm Which A Tariff Does Is Invisible. It's Spread Widely. There Are People That Don't Have Jobs Because Of Tariffs But They Don't Know It.

The High Rate Of Unemployment Among Teenagers, And Especially Black Teenagers, Is Both A Scandal And A Serious Source Of Social Unrest. Yet It Is Largely A Result Of Minimum Wage Laws. We Regard The Minimum Wage Law As One Of The Most, If Not The Most, Anti-black Laws On The Statute Books.

There Is No Person, No Theorist So Reckless As He Who Says That The Facts Speak For Themselves.

Is There Some Society You Know Of That Doesn't Run On Greed? You Think Russia Doesn't Run On Greed? You Think China Doesn't Run On Greed? What Is Greed?

Reality Ensures That The End Of History Will Never Come.

Every Friend Of Freedom... Must Be As Revolted As I Am By The Prospect Of Turning The United States Into An Armed Camp, By The Vision Of Jails Filled With Casual Drug Users And Of An Army Of Enforcers Empowered To Invade The Liberty Of Citizens On Slight Evidence.

The Only Reason There Is A Crisis About Social Security In The Us And Pensions In Europe And Japan Is That You Cannot Maintain A "ponzi" Scheme Indefinitely. We Have Collected From Today's Young To Pay Today's Old And Counted On Tomorrow's Young To Keep Doing So. That Was A Fine Scheme As Long As The Number Of Young People Was Rising Faster Than Old People. When That Ratio Comes To An End, Such A System Also Has To End.

Anybody Who Was Easily Converted Was Not Worth Converting.

There Are Severe Limits To The Good That The Government Can Do For The Economy, But There Are Almost No Limits To The Harm It Can Do.

Nothing Is So Permanent As A Temporary Government Program.

Our Minds Tell Us, And History Confirms, That The Great Threat To Freedom Is The Concentration Of Power. Government Is Necessary To Preserve Our Freedom, It Is An Instrument Through Which We Can Exercise Our Freedom; Yet By Concentrating Power In Political Hands, It Is Also A Threat To Freedom. Even Though The Men Who Wield This Power Initially Be Of Good Will And Even Though They Be Not Corrupted By The Power They Exercise, The Power Will Both Attract And Form Men Of A Different Stamp.

Economists May Not Know How To Run The Economy, But They Know How To Create Shortages Or Gluts Simply By Regulating Prices Below The Market, Or Artificially Supporting Them From Above.

The Fall Of The Berlin Wall Really Demonstrated Beyond The Shadow Of A Doubt That There Was A Bad System, And What Subsequently Happened In The Soviet Union, That That System Was A Failure.

Only A Crisis—actual Or Perceived—produces Real Change. When That Crisis Occurs, The Actions That Are Taken Depend On The Ideas That Are Lying Around.

The Most Unresolved Problem Of The Day Is Precisely The Problem That Concerned The Founders Of This Nation: How To Limit The Scope And Power Of Government. Tyranny, Restrictions On Human Freedom, Come Primarily From Governmental Restrictions That We Ourselves Have Set Up.

There Is One And Only One Social Responsibility Of Business - To Use It Resources And Engage In Activities Designed To Increase Its Profits So Long As It Stays Within The Rules Of The Game, Which Is To Say, Engages In Open And Free Competition Without Deception Or Fraud.

Central Bankers Always Try To Avoid Their Last Big Mistake. So Every Time There's The Threat Of A Contraction In The Economy, They'll Over Stimulate The Economy, By Printing Too Much Money. The Result Will Be A Rising Roller Coaster Of Inflation, With Each High And Low Being Higher Than The Preceding One.

A Crackpot Theory. Instead Of Saying Labor's Exploited, As Marx Did, Kelso Says Capital's Exploited. It's Worse Than Marx. It's Marx Stood On Its Head.

The Argument For The Free Market Is A Complicated And Sophisticated One And Depends On Demonstration Of Secondary Effects. I Have Confidence Market Efficiency Will Win Out.

Market Efficiency

Italy May Well Be The Main Problem. It Has Benefited Most From The Euro By Having Been Able To Get The Euro Interest Rate Instead Of What Otherwise Would Have Been Its Own. That Would Be Much Higher Because Italy Has Been Accumulating So Much Debt. In The Past, Italy Has Inflated Away Its Debt. The Virtue Of The Euro Is That Italy Can't Do It Alone. A Tight Ecb Policy Wouldn't Permit That To Happen Again.

If Even A Small Fraction Of The Money We Now Spend On Trying To Enforce Drug Prohibition Were Devoted To Treatment And Drug Rehabilitation, In An Atmosphere Of Compassion Not Punishment, The Reduction In Drug Usage And In The Harm Done To Users Could Be Dramatic.

We Measure Poverty By What I Believe Is A Very, Very Crude Concept. We Actually Measure Poverty By Trying To Get Some Kind Of An Estimate Of The Minimum Expenditures On Food That Are Required To Maintain Health, Multiplying That Number By Three, And Saying That's The Level Of Poverty. And It's A Very Crude, Inaccurate Arrangement.

You Can Only Make Money If You Buy A Product, Whatever It Is - Maybe A Currency, Maybe Wheat And Maybe Something Else - At A Relatively Low Price And Sell It At A Higher Price Than You Buy It At. There's No Other Way To Make Money.

I Want People To Take Thought About Their Condition And To Recognize That The Maintainence Of A Free Society Is A Very Difficult And Complicated Thing And It Requires A Self-denying Ordinance Of The Most Extreme Kind. It Requires A Willingness To Put Up With Temporary Evils On The Basis Of The Subtle And Sophisticated Understanding That If You Step In To Do Something About Them You Not Only May Make Them Worse, You Will Spread Your Tenticles And Get Bad Results Elsewhere.

The Major Basis For My Opposition To Marijuana Prohibition Has Not Been How Badly It's Worked, The Fact That It's Produced Much More Harm Than Good - It Has Been Primarily A Moral Reason: I Don't Think The State Has Any More Right To Tell Me What To Put Into My Mouth Than It Has To Tell Me What Can Come Out Of My Mouth.

Political Freedom Means The Absence Of Coercion Of A Man By His Fellow Men. The Fundamental Threat To Freedom Is Power To Coerce, Be It In The Hands Of A Monarch, A Dictator, An Oligarchy, Or A Momentary Majority. The Preservation Of Freedom Requires The Elimination Of Such Concentration Of Power To The Fullest Possible Extent And The Dispersal And Distribution Of Whatever Power Cannot Be Eliminated — A System Of Checks And Balances.

The Key Insight Of Adam Smith's Wealth Of Nations Is Misleadingly Simple: If An Exchange Between Two Parties Is Voluntary, It Will Not Take Place Unless Both Believe They Will Benefit From It. Most Economic Fallacies Derive From The Neglect Of This Simple Insight, From The Tendency To Assume That There Is A Fixed Pie, That One Party Can Gain Only At The Expense Of Another.

The Unions Might Be Good For The People Who Are In The Unions But It Doesn't Do A Thing For The People Who Are Unemployed. Because The Union Keeps Down The Number Of Jobs, It Doesn't Do A Thing For Them.

It Doesn't Worry Me A Bit That China And Japan Hold So Much Us Debt. In A Way, It Seems Foolish For Them To Do It Because They Get Lower Returns Than They Might Elsewhere. But That Is Their Business.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon In The Sense That It Is And Can Be Produced Only By A More Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money Than In Output.

Thanks To Economists, All Of Us, From The Days Of Adam Smith And Before Right Down To The Present, Tariffs Are Perhaps One Tenth Of One Percent Lower Than They Otherwise Would Have Been. And Because Of Our Efforts, We Have Earned Our Salaries Ten-thousand Fold.

The Way You Solve Things Is By Making It Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing.

People Hired By Government Know Who Is Their Benefactor. People Who Lose Their Jobs Or Fail To Get Them Because Of The Government Program Do Not Know That That Is The Source Of Their Problem. The Good Effects Are Visible. The Bad Effects Are Invisible. The Good Effects Generate Votes. The Bad Effects Generate Discontent, Which Is As Likely To Be Directed At Private Business As At The Government.

It Is Most Attractive About The Us To People And Countries With Wealth Is That It Can Provide Security, Insurance Really, Against Political Instability. Nobody Is Afraid That The Money They Place In The Us Is At Risk Of Expropriation Or Of In Some Other Way Being Taken Away. For This Safety, The Wealth Holders Of The World Are Willing To Accept A Lower Rate Of Return.

See, If You Look At The Drug War From A Purely Economic Point Of View, The Role Of The Government Is To Protect The Drug Cartel. That's Literally True.

China's Productive System Draws Upon The Other East Asian Countries To A Great Extent. The Volume Of Trade Is Much Larger Than The Net Amount Being Exported From China. China Needs Substantial Reserves To Finance All That.

How Did We Make The Transition From Using Wood To Using Coal, From Using Coal To Using Oil, From Using Oil To Using Natural Gas? How In God's Name Did We Make That Transition Without A Federal Energy Agency?

If, For Example, Existing Government Intervention Is Minor, We Shall Attach A Smaller Weight To The Negative Effect Of Additional Government Intervention. This Is An Important Reason Why Many Earlier Liberals, Like Henry Simons, Writing At A Time When Government Was Small By Today's Standards, Were Willing To Have Government Undertake Activities That Today's Liberals Would Not Accept Now That Government Has Become So Overgrown.

Most Economic Fallacies Derive From The Tendency To Assume That There Is A Fixed Pie, That One Party Can Gain Only At The Expense Of Another.

If Freedom Led To Wider Inequality, I Would Prefer That To A World In Which I Got Artificial Equality At The Expense Of Freedom. My Objective, My God... Is Freedom Of Individuals To Pursue Their Own Values.

Freedom Means Diversity But Also Mobility. It Preserves The Opportunity For Today's Disadvantaged To Become Tomorrow's Privileged And, In The Process, Enables Almost Everyone, From Top To Bottom, To Enjoy A Fuller And Richer Life.

Germany's Problem, In Part, Is That It Went Into The Euro At The Wrong Exchange Rate That Overvalued The Deutsche Mark.

The Great Advances Of Civilization, Whether In Architecture Or Painting, In Science Or Literature, In Industry Or Agriculture, Have Never Come From Centralized Government.

There's No Way To Avoid A Burden On Your Freedom. The Costs Themselves Are A Burden On Your Freedom. The Restrictions That Are Necessary In Order To Get Rid Of The Terrorists Are A Burden To Your Freedom. So There's No Way In The Short Run To Avoid A Restriction On Your Freedom.

Drugs Are A Tragedy For Addicts. But Criminalizing Their Use Converts That Tragedy Into A Disaster For Society, For Users And Non-users Alike. Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Drugs Is A Replay Of Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Alcoholic Beverages.

The World Runs On Individuals Pursuing Their Self Interests. The Great Achievements Of Civilization Have Not Come From Government Bureaus. Einstein Didn't Construct His Theory Under Order From A Bureaucrat. Henry Ford Didn't Revolutionize The Automobile Industry That Way.

Only A Crisis, Actual Or Perceived, Produces Real Change.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

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