James Surowiecki Quotes
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What an economy really wants, after all, is not more investment per se but better investment. It wants capital to flow to companies that will create value - not in the form of a rising stock price but in the form of more goods for less cost, more jobs, and rising wages - by enhancing productivity.
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The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.
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The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.
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When Americans think of college these days, the first word that often comes to mind is 'debt.' And from 'debt' it's just a short hop to other unpleasant words, like 'payola,' 'kickback,' and 'bribery.'
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Steve Jobs was rare: a C.E.O. who actually had a huge impact on his company's fortunes. Contrary to corporate mythology, most C.E.O.s could be easily replaced, if not by your average Joe, then by your average executive vice-president. But Jobs genuinely earned the label of superstar.
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Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.
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Art collecting has traditionally been the domain of wealthy individuals in search of rewards beyond the purely financial.
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You might say that economic history is the history of people learning to manage risk.
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In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.
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In order to work well, markets need a basic level of trust.
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Patrimonial capitalism's legacy is that many people see reform as a euphemism for corruption and self-dealing.
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Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.
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On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough.
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If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.
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In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.
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Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.
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Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely to increase prices, since they've learned that if they don't, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.
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The value of a currency is, ultimately, what someone will give you for it - whether in food, fuel, assets, or labor. And that's always and everywhere a subjective decision.
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In terms of productivity - that is, how much a worker produces in an hour - there's little difference between the U.S., France, and Germany. But since more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth.
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Congressional Republicans themselves have vehemently defended the idea that preexisting conditions should not be used to deny people insurance.
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Corporate welfare isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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Life insurance became popular only when insurance companies stopped emphasizing it as a good investment and sold it instead as a symbolic commitment by fathers to the future well-being of their families.
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For most Americans, work is central to their experience of the world, and the corporation is one of the fundamental institutions of American life, with an enormous impact, for good and ill, on how we live, think, and feel.
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You can't fuel real economic growth with indiscriminate credit. You can only fuel it with well-allocated, long-term investment.