Central banks need to be able to buy bonds if there are short-term malfunctions of the markets. But buying bonds without differentiation and without limits would be very problematic.
I think the understanding of the role of markets has really helped advance the values of entrepreneurship. It's helped shape public policy discussions in a whole variety of ways.
It was wrong to allow Stalin to shape the European landscape of the 20th century. It would be even more wrong to let him shape the landscape of the 21st century.
Buy a $100 U.S. bond and frame it to teach your children about inflation by watching the U.S. bond value diminish to almost nothing over the next 20 years.
If you're in any field, you should own a farm because one day you will be grateful that you are able to grow your own agricultural produce.
The Federal Reserve - all of them - could be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, and then pouring gasoline on top of it, and then light a cigar with matches, throw the match into the gasoline, and then not notice that there is any danger.
There's no such thing as a favorite investment. But I think I tend to invest in Asia in promising countries, in equities, in real estate, and I own precious metals, obviously.
But then in April of 1985 the dollar began a sharp decline. The dollar's trade weighted value fell 23 percent in just 12 months and by a total of 37 percent by the beginning of 1988.
An increase in the relative price of products from the low wage manufacturers in Asia and Latin America will also make those products less attractive to American consumers.
So just as I want pilots on the planes that I fly, when it comes to monetary policy, I want to think that there is someone with sound judgement at the controls.
As an economics undergraduate, I also worked on a part-time basis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a company that was advising customers about portfolio decisions, writing reports.
What happened after publication of our paper was that, for the next 40 years, people said, all right, we now know the answer to the capital structure question under ideal conditions.
Most people might just as well buy a share of the whole market, which pools all the information, than delude themselves into thinking they know something the market doesn't.
Then I started to do furniture and interiors for a friend and just to get stuff in a magazine, and then slowly started to build up and started to doing exhibitions.
Even if there's no way to stop U.S. corporations from shedding their U.S. identities and becoming foreign corporations, there's no reason they should retain the privileges of U.S. citizenship.
News and images move so easily across borders that attitudes and aspirations are no longer especially national. Cyber-weapons, no longer the exclusive province of national governments, can originate in a hacker's garage.
If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully enforced and through penalties higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.
America spends a fortune on drugs: more per person than any other nation on earth, even though Americans are no healthier than the citizens of other advanced nations.
A Democratic president should propose a major permanent tax reduction on the middle class and working class. I suspect most of the public would find this attractive.
Yes, the rich will find ways to avoid paying more taxes, courtesy of clever accountants and tax attorneys. But this has always been the case, regardless of where the tax rate is set.
During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced.
