Here’s why I would recommend against [selling the U.S. stock markets short]....Retail brokers normally require investors to hold any short-sale proceeds in U.S. dollars, usually earning no interest. The dollar, seen through my famously jaundiced eye, could lose more purchasing power than the security you sold short lost value....I’ve got a much better idea, which is to borrow dollars and spend them to acquire foreign income-producing assets, using the income to pay the interest.
Peter Schiff
What is scarce is money. The lack of money to spend on goods is what keeps the unemployed resources from producing more goods. Work, moreover, instead of being a curse, is desired more than anything else because the alternative is not enjoyment of leisure but the suffering of unemployment and deprivation. Of course, if people could get income without they would not object too much (although their self-respect in feeling they are useful members in society who are earning their income is too easily underestimated). But it is only by finding work they can obtain the necessary income they need.
Abba Lerner
Overconsumption by US citizens, US buy-outs of foreign companies and dollars the Pentagon spends abroad all end up in foreign central banks. These governments face a hard choice: either recycle the dollars back to America by buying US Treasury bonds or let the “free market” force up their currencies relative to the dollar – thereby pricing their exports out of world markets, creating domestic unemployment and business failures. US-style free markets hook them into a system that forces them to accept unlimited dollars. Now they want out. ... The US is the world’s largest debtor, yet has avoided the pain of “structural adjustments” imposed on other debtor nations. US interest rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programmes that Washington has forced on other countries via the International Monetary Fund and other vehicles. - June 2009
Michael (economist) Hudson
There is a phase of this matter which is both interesting and serious. The farmer has always produced the foodstuffs to exchange with the city dweller for the other necessities of life. This division of labor is the basis of modern civilization. At the present time it is threatened with breakdown. The town and city industries are not producing adequate goods to exchange with the food-producing farmer. Raw materials and fuel are in short supply. Machinery is lacking or worn out. The farmer or the peasant cannot find the goods for sale which he desires to purchase. So the sale of his farm produce for money which he cannot use seems to him an unprofitable transaction. He, therefore, has withdrawn many fields from crop cultivation and is using them for grazing. He feeds more grain to stock and finds for himself and his family an ample supply of food, however short he may be on clothing and the other ordinary gadgets of civilization. Meanwhile, people in the cities are short of food and fuel, and in some places approaching the starvation levels. So the governments are forced to use their foreign money and credits to procure these necessities abroad. This process exhausts funds which are urgently needed for reconstruction. Thus a very serious situation is rapidly developing which bodes no good for the world.
George Marshall
It is not the sale of my soul that troubles me: I have sold it too often to care about that. I have sold it for a professorship. I have sold it for an income. ... What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles?
George Bernard Shaw
If you want to understand financial markets, and their effects on the economy, you have to understand the trading game. Many short-term price movements are neither random nor caused by economic fundamentals. They're caused by investors buying and selling.
Aaron C. Brown
Schiff, Peter
Schiffer, Claudia
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