Paul Samuelson: Notable Quotes

A few more quotable quotes from that new interview with 94-year-old economist Paul Samuelson:

On Greg Mankiw and Ben Bernanke

The 1980s trained macroeconomics -- like Greg Mankiw and Ben Bernanke and so forth -- became a very complacent group, very ill adapted to meet with a completely unpredictable and new situation, such as we've had.

On Robert Lucas and his acolytes

Those guys were useless at Federal Reserve meetings.

On Alan Greenspan

But the trouble is that he had been an Ayn Rander. You can take the boy out of the cult but you can't take the cult out of the boy.

On Milton Friedman

He was a libertarian to the point of nuttiness.

On bubbles

And I'm not sure most of the people that get caught up in the middle of a bubble can be described as irrational. It seems pretty rational to buy a house and flip it in the next few weeks at a profit when that's been happening for along time. It works both ways.

On the dollar

I think it's almost inevitable that, with a billion people in China wide awake for the first time, and a billion people in India, there's going to be some kind of a terrible run against the dollar. And I doubt it can stay orderly, because all of our own hedge funds will be right in the vanguard of the operation.

Comments

[conceptwizard:]

Interesting....my view exactly on the dollar. I think the Fed is underestmating the BRIC's move away from the dollar. They are already making moves and will continue to do so.

They view tis as unpractical.

For starters, the six SCO countries and BRIC countries intend to trade in their own currencies so as to get the benefit of mutual credit that the United States until now has monopolized for itself. Toward this end, China has struck bilateral deals with Argentina and Brazil to denominate their trade in renminbi rather than the dollar, sterling or euros, and two weeks ago China reached an agreement with Malaysia to denominate trade between the two countries in renminbi. Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad explained in January that as a Muslim country, Malaysia wants to avoid doing anything that would facilitate US military action against Islamic countries, including Palestine. The nation has too many dollar assets as it is, his colleagues explained. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan of the People's Bank of China wrote an official statement on its website that the goal is now to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations.”.

The Fed is underestimating the rest of the World's desire to get out of the dolar.

Jul 01 02:54 PM

[THofler:]

The Fed was responsible for regulating the trashiest of the subprime mortgages and I do think Greenspan's Rand leanings were partly responsible for that failure.

But my understanding is that Friedman's experiences in Chile cured him of the nuttier parts of his libertarianism. He then understood that establishing an orderly economic playing field is paramount.

And speaking of uncle Milty, his chapter (Free to Choose) on the economic inefficiency of guilds is priceless in today's debate on healthcare.

Jul 01 09:13 PM

[Ferdinand E...:]

I said it before and I'll say it again. Paul Samuelson was invited to something in Stockholm many years ago, and he was awarded the same status that Albert Einstein might have received - and he deserved it. He was definitely the main man, and foks who thought otherwise kept their mouths shut.

Jul 02 09:17 AM

[relaplan1:]

Paul Sammuelson was the chief architect of LBJ's, War On Poverty that exploded during Jimmy Carters reign with a 21% Prime Lending Rate in 1978.

The 21% Prime Lending Rate was the result of out of control entitlement spending.

Reagan summed it up best, "We declared War on Poverty and Poverty won!

Jul 02 05:28 PM