Thursday, April 1, 2010

Pearls Before Swine and John Maynard Keynes

Animal Spirits: "Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities." - The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)

*****

Do-nothing long-run focused economics: "Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again." - A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)

In addition to the comforts of alcohol: "I should have drunk more champagne" - attributed last words before dying in 1946

2 comments:

  1. Rat does resemble Murray Rothbard, doesn't he?

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/murraycolor150.jpg

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  2. The second one actually does a great job illustrating how it was that the discipline of economics emerged out of moral philosophy.

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