Quotes of the day

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.--WSJ Annual Thanksgiving Editorial

I find that five minutes of talking to Larry [Summers] is often more valuable than an hour of talking to someone else.--Tim Geithner

Volcker is a very, very smart man. It is probably heresy, but I wonder if the endowments, like steel gonads, needed to crush inflation with 20% short term rates, are the same endowments that make you good at battling collapsing credit markets. The man and the moment have to combine correctly--Churchill was very good at battling Hitler, and very bad at peacetime tasks like running the Bank of England, or post-war Britain.--Megan McArdle

When developing countries get into a financial crisis, the problem must lie with their venal politicians and lack of financial discipline. When it is U.S. that is in trouble, the fault must lie with the system. Of course.--Dani Rodrik

So, to push the parlance of this passage past the point that people can put up with prior to puking, as the penultimate paragraph presages, there is plenty of point to pork-barrel politics when it comes to the passage of programs to prop up our pained pecuniary polity and positively impact its per capita product and probable performance.--KNZN

As excited as Europeans were to see Democratic senator Barack Obama elected president in the U.S., there turned out to be an unexpected cloud around that silver lining. Namely, it's that blacks, and minorities in general, have made far less social progress in Europe than in the United States. Obama's election is just another, and rather striking, example of this.--StrategyPage

Benjamin Graham once wrote that the secret to happiness is learning to live well within your means. Did he mean to “live well” within your means, or to live “well within” your means? I think he intentionally left the sentence ambiguous.--Jason Zweig

Favre has played at least parts of 18 seasons. Roethlisberger has played five. They have the same number of Super Bowl titles. Enough said.--Tony Massarotti