Saturday 2011-06-04

Business Cycles by Lars Tvede

A somewhat muddled cross between Goedel, Escher, Bach and an Austrian economics version of The Worldly Philosophers. Tvede asserts that a business cycle exists, is chaotic, and has a defined duration; he does not substantiate this claim.

Men often stumble over the truth, but most manage to pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
-- Winston Churchill
Others would, more rudely, cut off a slice around the edge (of the gold coin) before they passed them on. To prevent this, (Isaac) Newton had suggested that coins should be given a milled edge, so that it would be easy to detect if they had been clipped.
-- The Dream Team of Money
To some degree, an acceleration, or a higher velocity of money circulation, will have a similar effect as an increase in the supply of money.
-- Richard Cantillon, 1734
Laissez faire, laissez passer
-- of the international flows of goods (and of people, I say ;)
Every morning, John (S Mill) had to deliver a complete written report about what his father had said the day before.
-- The Napoleon of Finance
I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.
-- Jay Gould, Jay and the Phantom Gold
On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage, Seven Pioneers
(Joseph) Schumpeter was well trained in sword-fighting, and after a short fight, he nicked the librarian's shoulder. The seconds quickly intervened, and the fight was over. Schumpeter apologized for the whole affair, the librarian apologized as well, and after that the students were allowed to borrow books about political economy.
-- 1909 in Europe -- Lover, Horseman, Economist
Money isn't everything, but it sure keeps you in touch with your children.
-- J Paul "awful awful" Getty -- The Problem with Money
Blaming speculators as a response to financial crises goes back at least to the Greeks. It's almost always the wrong response.
-- Larry Summers -- The World's Biggest Market: Foreign Exchange
Seven drivers of cycles:
Monetary accelerator
Inventory accelerator
Capital spending accelerator
Collateral accelerator
Emotional accelerator
Exhaustion phenomena
Credit crunch
-- Business Cycles and Market Rotation