Showing posts with label Economics USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economics USA. Show all posts

Friday, June 19, 2009

Interview with Paul Samuelson

Conor Clarke recently posted an interview with Paul Samuelson on The Atlantic (part 1 here; part 2 here). Although I'm not a thorough Keynesian like Samuelson, I have a lot of respect for Samuelson's work. One of my favorite Samuelson quotes comes from an Economics U$A video. He was talking about the resistance to and gradual acceptance of Keynesian economics at Harvard:

Funeral by funeral, science makes progress.


Anyway, I found the interview to be fascinating.

A great quote on Milton Friedman:

Milton Friedman. Friedman had a solid MV = PQ doctrine from which he deviated very little all his life. By the way, he's about as smart a guy as you'll meet. He's as persuasive as you hope not to meet. And to be candid, I should tell you that I stayed on good terms with Milton for more than 60 years. But I didn't do it by telling him exactly everything I thought about him. He was a libertarian to the point of nuttiness.


Interesting quote on behavioral economics:

In my view behavioral science describes an extremely large and important part of the modern picture. However, whenever the economy turns in a very irrational
say, that can create opportunities for very rational speculators to make a profit. So you can still get some approximation on the micro level of an efficient market.


A response to those who blame greed for the crisis:

[P]eople say, 'greed has suddenly increased.' But it isn't that greed's increased. What's increased is the realization that you've got a free field to reach out for what you'd like to do.