Henry Morgenthau on the failure of New Deal Spending in 1939

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!

~ FDR's secretary of Treasury and close friend, Henry Morgenthau, who served from 1934 to 1945, writing in 1939

Ludwig Von Mises on higher living standards (message to Ayn Rand)

You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you.

~ Ludwig Von Mises to Ayn Rand

Jens O. Parssons on the role of inflation in stock market investing

Attempting to make profits from the stock market, or even to make sense of it, without completely understanding the universal determinant of inflation was like being at sea among uncharted rocks and shoals without so much as a tide table.

~Jens O. Parssons, Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations, 1974

The Obama Administration on the "Summer of Recovery" of 2010

As the summer heats up, it is becoming clear that it could quite possibly be the most active season yet when it comes to recovering our economy. There are Recovery Act-funded projects breaking ground across the country that are creating quality jobs for Americans and economic growth for businesses, large and small.

This summer is sure to be a Summer of Economic Recovery.

~Ron Sims, Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, WhiteHouse.gov blog, A Summer of Recovery, June 17, 2010

Irving Fisher admits socialist sympathies to Yale Socialist Club, 1941

I believe [William Graham Sumner] was one of the greatest professors we ever had at Yale, but I have drawn far away from his point of view, that of the old laissez faire doctrine.

I remember he said in his classroom: "Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist."

That amused his class very much, for he was as far from a revolutionary as you could expect. But I would like to say that if that time comes when there are two great parties, Anarchists and Socialists, then I am a Socialist.

~ Irving Fisher, in a speech to the Yale Socialist Club in 1941, as quoted in the biography My Father, Irving Fisher, p. 44

Barton Biggs diving headfirst into stocks after 56% rise

This is not a time where you want to be underinvested. The odds of a significant slowdown are one in five, pretty remote.

~ Barton Biggs, managing partner, Traxis Partners, "Biggs Recommends Stocks Given Odds Economy Will Avoid Recession", Bloomberg.com, September 1st, 2010

James Altucher on bullish Q2 2010 GDP growth

It was positive. Certainly 1.6% growth is better than negative growth. We've now had 4 quarters in a row of positive GDP growth. Clearly we are not in a recession. Are we heading for a double-dip? I doubt it.

~ James Altucher, partner, Baytree Capital, "Seven Reasons Why There Is No Double Dip," SeekingAlpha.com, September 1st, 2010