Kyle Bass: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would've failed without Fed bailouts

I think they made a really significant error during the crisis.  I don't think that there was enough of a flush of bad activity and bad investing back then, and the point is when the banks and investment banks came to the Fed and wanted the Fed to bail them out, the taxpayers ended up bailing out the bankers.  Goldman Sachs exists today because they were made a bank holding company and so does Morgan Stanley.  Back then, I don't think they would've made it if not for the Fed stepping in.

~ Kyle Bass, Wall Street Week interview, 6:29 mark, posted January 3, 2016

James Turk on Fedspeak, a.k.a. propaganda

The Federal Reserve often speaks of controlling expectations. That’s a politically correct way of describing propaganda.

~ James Turk

Lionel Robbins on the delusion of stabilizing the price level (1934)

If, as soon as there appeared signs of a general boom on security markets, the Central Banks were to take action to bring it to an end, it seems probable that extremes of business fluctuations might be avoided.  Certainly this is a policy which would have averted much of the distresses from which the world has been suffering recently.

But whatever may be the truth in this very difficult matter, one thing seems tolerably certain.  The policy of stabilizing the general level of prices and ignoring all other movements is a snare and a delusion.  It was this policy, conjoined with that other policy of frustrating the effects of gold movements, to which we have already alluded, which was largely responsible for the catastrophe of 1929.  Again and again during the boom years we were assured by men who should have known better that the trade cycle had been eliminated, that so long as prices did not rise there was no fear of over-expansion, that the boom in land and common stocks was merely a reflection of the increased value of property, and that if there were any sign of a fall of prices due to a transfer of expenditure to Stock Exchange and real-estate speculation, then the Central Banks should create more credit to support the speculation.  This policy was pursued.  Yet such is the inflexibility of the human mind that, in spite of all that it led to, there are yet to be heard voices of men who failed utterly to see what was happening before the depression, and who throughout the slump, no doubt with the best will in the world, have consistently supported those policies which have arrested liquidation, prolonged uncertainty and delayed the coming recovery.

~ Lionel Robbins, The Great Depression, 1934

Charles Darwin on man's noble qualities and humble roots

Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

~ Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin on survival and adaptability

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

~ Charles Darwin

Albert Jay Nock on the Law of Unintended Consequences

Any contravention of natural law, any tampering with the natural order of things, must have its consequences, and the only recourse for escaping them is such as entails worse consequences.

~ Albert Jay Nock

John Maynard Keynes on crowd behavior

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for the reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

John Maynard Keynes