John Kenneth Galbraith...

A few observations by JK Galbraith.

On the floating currency:
The term [floating currency] is a fraud. Economists and Central Bankers invented the reference to floating currency when instability in the exchange rates become inevitable. With prices rising at different rates in different countries, there was no chance for stability in the rate at which different currencies were exchanged. That was inconvenient. But what was inevitable and inconvenient could be improved by giving it a better name. So instead of speaking of currency instability and unpredicitability or disorder or chaos, the term "floating currency" was invented. The public heard the monetary experts & authorities speaking with wonderful solemnity of "the float" & imagined that they had found something new. They hadn't. They were in a bad storm and called it atmospheric ventilation.

On Unemployment:
Unemployment is always less evident in an agricultural economy. People divide up what work there is, and work less hard. Disguised unemployment replaces the open statistical unemployment of the industrial economy and factory system.

On Price Controls:
When prices are generally fixed, inflation manifests itself not in higher prices, but in longer queues, longer lines waiting for scarce goods (remember the License Raj?)

And a few more....
Income & Inflation:
It has been been proposed that there be a specific differential between the lowest-paid worker & the highest paid executive. Sooner or later, there will probably be some such rule....Income causes inflation and therefore must be restrained.

On Monetary Policy:
Monetary policy is a natural & legitimate expression of conservatism. If you are not concerned about unemployment, if you don't like trade unions, and if you prefer large business over small business that depend on borrowed money, you should be in favour of monetary policy. Umm....

On Education:
All education increases mobility.

Btw, When do you guys finish? And how about posting placement stats here?

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Thoreau

Haven't posted here for a while. And since I have nothing much to say, I shall let Thoreau speak. Something that struck a chord, when I read it today.

"We read the English poets; we study botany and zoology and geology, lean and dry as they are; and it is rare that we get a new suggestion. It is ebb-tide with the scientific reports, Professor ______ in the chair. We would fain know something more about these animals and stones and trees around us. We are ready to skin the animals alive to come at them. Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race. How little I know of that arbor-vitae when I have learned only what science can tell me! It is but a word. It is not a tree of life. But there are twenty words for the tree and its different parts which the Indian gave, which are not in our botanies, which imply a more practical and vital science. He used it every day. He was well acquainted with its wood, and its bark, and its leaves. No science does more than arrange what knowledge we have of any class of objects. But, generally speaking, how much more conversant was the Indian with any wild animal or plant than we are, and in his language is implied all that intimacy, as much as ours is expressed in our language. How many words in his language about a moose, or birch bark, and the like!."

From Thoreau's Blog

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