Quotes of the day

If you look at the sequence of housing finance crises (the Depression, the S&L crisis, and the current mess), the response to each crisis became the basis of the next crisis.--Arnold Kling

We tend to think of the task of regulation as one of making systems hard to break. An alternative to consider is making systems easy to fix. Think of a computer. You can try to use firewalls and anti-virus software to make your computer hard to break. But it still pays to back up your data to make it easy to fix.--Arnold Kling

We have investors who were invested with Madoff, and they can’t thank me enough.--John Paulson

A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.--Oscar Wilde

But persuading one’s fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one’s views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts–or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them–than I would forbid it to do so.--Justice Antonin Scalia

Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.--Justice John Marshall Harlan

In effect, [President Obama's proposal to limit the tax deductibility of charitable contributions] would be a tax on the charities, reducing their receipts by a dollar for every dollar of extra revenue the government collects. It is hard to imagine a rationale for taxing schools, hospitals, medical research budgets and arts organizations in this way. I suspect that the administration officials who drafted this proposal did not understand that it would have this perverse effect.--Martin Feldstein

Scarcely does one see Africa’s (elected) officials or … African policymakers… offer an opinion on what should be done, or what might actually work to save the continent from its regression. This very important responsibility has, for all intents and purposes, and to the bewilderment of many an African, been left to musicians who reside outside Africa.--Dambisa Moyo

We’ve blogged about David Gray’s “Babylon” being used as a tool of torture, and how Barry Manilow records were played in Sydney, Australia, to flush teenage loiterers from its parks. But music can also heal, of course. --Freakonomics

Heard an interview with running back Fred Taylor on the radio recently and he sounds like a colorful, intelligent, quotable man. Clearly, he has yet to take the Patriots’ media training classes.--Tony Massarotti