I don’t have time for blogging, but I read widely and often come across writing that stimulates my thinking, inspires me or – sometimes – bewilders me.  I’ll share occasional excerpts here. I hope to keep this section fresh, so visit often.

Michael J. Parks

A wide gap has opened up between Europe and the U.S. [Per capita GDP in 2008 in the U.S. was] $47,200; for Germany, $35,400; France, $33,100; Italy, $31,252. The average American produces 43% more than the average Frenchman. The economist Mark Perry has noted … that citizens of America's poorest state, Mississippi, have a higher GDP than Italians; and Alabamans beat the Germans, French and Belgians.

James K. Glassman in the Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2010

The world is on a journey to an unstable destination, through unfamiliar territory, on an uneven road and, critically, having already used its spare tire.

Mohamed El-Erian, chairman, PIMCO, May 2010

Easy money has negative consequences in addition to the risk of inflation and devaluing the dollar. It can also feed asset bubbles. In recent years, we have gone from one bubble and bailout to the next. Each bailout has rewarded those who acted imprudently. This has encouraged additional risky behavior, feeding the creation of new, larger bubbles. . .The Greek crisis may be the first sign of the sovereign debt bubble bursting. Though we don't know what's going to happen next, the good news for our grandchildren is that we will have to face our own debts.

David Einhorn, Greenlight Capital, in the New York Times, May 27, 2010

Paul Krugman, New York Times, May 21, 2010

Who speaks for the thrifty? Hardly anyone in Washington these days. . . With almost half the population owing no federal tax, the burden of boosting government revenue will fall on the minority of Americans who have accumulated some liquid savings. . . The Tax Policy Center calculates that getting budget deficits to 3 per cent of output through taxing only the well-off would see top marginal rates more than double to 77 per cent. Given the concentration of savings among a minority of the population, soaking the rich will be easier than slashing entitlement spending. But paralysis in Washington and the Fed's dual mandate could result in a third path equally devastating to the wealthy: allowing inflation to debase private savings while easing indebtedness. Either way, America's outnumbered savers may succumb to the tyranny of the majority.

Lex column in the Financial Times, May 18, 2010

It is time to stop searching for the right letter to describe the recovery. It isn’t a V and it won’t be a W, it is a hyphen – flat, low growth indicative of an economy in the process of deleveraging.

Blogger Steve Blitz, June 4, 2010

 . . . [H]owever birth rates and migration patterns change, America’s geographical size will be a huge advantage. It means that Americans can keep reproducing and welcoming immigrants without their country ever feeling crowded. If the population doubled, it would still be only a quarter as crowded as Britain is today, and less than a hundredth as crowded as Singapore. Vast swathes of land are almost empty.

The Economist, May 15, 2010

Trust itself entered a bear market in 2008, complementing and perhaps surpassing the selloffs in stocks, mortgages and commodities. Never to be confused with angels, we humans seem to outdo ourselves when money is on the line. So it is that Bernard Madoff, supposed pillar of the community, stands accused of perpetrating one of the greatest hoaxes since John Law discovered the inflationary possibilities of paper money in the early 18th century.

Barely nudging Mr. Madoff out of the top of the news was the Federal Reserve's announcement . . . that it intends to debase its own paper money. The year just ending has been a time of confusion as much as it has been of loss. But here, at least, was the bright beam of clarity. Specifically, the Fed pledged to print dollars in unlimited volume and to trim its funds rate, if necessary, all the way to zero.

James Grant in the Wall Street Journal Dec. 20, 2008

Nothing I have read, heard or seen will dissuade me from my view that China has made more economic progress in the last 30 years than any country in history.

Byron Wien of Pequot Capital Management,
quoted in The New York Times by Joe Nocera, April 26, 2008

Remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free- market capitalism died. For three decades we have moved towards market-driven financial systems. By its decision to rescue Bear Sterns, the Federal Reserve, the institution responsible for monetary policy in the US, chief protagonist of free-market capitalism, declared this era over.

Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, March 26, 2008

We are amidst the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The large complex financial institutions at the center of the global financial system need more capital. Until they get that capital, those firms will keep their risk-taking operations shuttered.

Vincent Reinhart in The Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2008

Possibly, one lender and one borrower could do business together without harm to themselves or to the economy… But masses of lenders and borrowers invariably seem to come to grief… First, they overdo it until the signs of excess become too obvious to ignore. Then, with contrite and fearful hearts, they proceed to underdo it. Such is the ''credit cycle,'' the eternal migration of lenders and borrowers between the extreme points of accommodation and stringency.

—James Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer

in an op-ed in The New York Times, Aug. 26, 2007

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

—Herbert Spencer, English philosopher (1820-1903)

Quoted by my friend Robert Frey, a Seattle
money manager, in a memo to clients on 8/10/2007

The inveterate spending habits of rich American households are financed by the thrift of poor Chinese peasants … [T]he contribution of financial market deregulation is a paradox… The more highly developed a country’s retail financial services, the less that country saves.

Scottish economist John Kay in the Financial Times, July 17, 2007

A fascinating Web site called "strange maps" compares the Gross Domestic Product of each U.S. state with a foreign country. Texas produces more than Canada, California matches France, Illinois is on a par with Mexico and little New Jersey equals the output of huge Russia.

George Melloan in the Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2007, Page A13

The smart money knows today's liquidity-inflated financial markets are full of risk. . . Yet private-equity firms, hedge funds and investment banks are acting as if the good times will continue. Skewed incentives, which pump up greed and damp fear, explain the discrepancy. Fortunes will be made if the good times roll on; but the insiders won't lose much if there is a crash because they are mostly playing with other people's money.

On the 'Greed-Fear Imbalance,' Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2007

The prospects for developing countries are . . . probably more favorable now than they have been since World War II. International trade is growing faster than global GDP. . . .. Information and technology continues to lower transactions costs . . . [T]he leaders in emerging economies [responsible for] policies that support private sector entrepreneurship and that lead to sustained inclusive growth have a wealth of experience to rely on. No one is in the dark.

Michael Spence, 2001 Nobel laureate in economics,
in The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2007.

Larry Summers, [formerly] president of Harvard and former US treasury secretary, argued at Davos that the world is going through a transformation as profound as the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution.  The claim is not absurd. . . . A world in which the marginal cost of collecting, storing, accessing and transmitting information is falling towards zero is unprecedented.

– Martin Wolf, The Financial Times, Feb. 1, 2006

As millions [in China, India and elsewhere in Asia] who have never flown before start taking to the air . . . just the annual increase in air traffic will, in about a decade, be as great as the total number of flyers in 1969, the year Boeing introduced the jumbo jet.

– The Economist, November 12, 2005

Whereas 40 years ago, demographers worried about a “population explosion,” today the proper concern is population decline. Native-born populations are shrinking in most of the advanced nations, which means they will need more immigrants...to maintain their present living standards.

– The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 11, 2005