Quotes from Robert Skidelsky

If only one person were perfectly informed there could never be a general crisis. But the only perfectly informed person is God, and he does not play the stock market.

You haven't I suppose ever mixed with politicians at close quarters. They're awful...their stupidity is inhuman.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little. Epicurus

It is true that Keynes's 'model' was a short-run model, but that's not because he was interested only in short-run stabilization. He wanted a full employment level of investment in the short-run, so as to get to the long-run quicker.

It is not just that we want more but that we want more than others, who at the same time want more than us; this fuels an endless race.

Economists whose common sense had not been completely destroyed by their theories rejected the drastic cure of destroying the existing economy in order to rebuild it in the correct proportions.

Modern developments have eased the intensity of the ancient struggle between creditors and debtors. Stock markets and limited liability have provided an alternative to bank borrowing for raising capital, and the penalties for default have been progressively relaxed. We no longer demand labour services of defaulting debtors, or send them to prison. Debt-bondage is a shadow of its old self.

notably the 1999 repeal of the US Glass–Steagall Act – allowed commercial banks to become investment banks as well. In addition to investing their depositors' money, they became highly leveraged speculators in the newly developed securities

Unlike the quantity theory of money, which is a 'supply of money' story, the credit theory of money is a 'demand for loans' tale. The amount of money fluctuates with the demand for loans and the creditworthiness of borrowers; and both fluctuate with the state of business.

Smith's doctrine of self-interest did more than just turn avarice into a virtue; it turned classical virtue into a vice.

Even when state money became paper, and therefore intrinsically worthless, it was thought desirable to maintain belief that government notes – promises to pay the bearer – were in fact debt certificates backed by gold. Until 1971, the value of the American dollar was widely believed to depend on its convertibility into gold, as though the value of gold guaranteed the value of paper dollars.

I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, Half a loaf for a bite to eat, Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, Will have more wealth than a Sultan's realm. – Omar Khayyam

A case can be made out for both positions. What distances Keynes most obviously from the 'progressives' is his attitude to social justice. Keynes did not object (or object strongly) to the existing social order on the ground that it unfairly or unjustly distributed life-chances;

Injustice becomes a matter of uncertainty, justice a matter of contractual predictability. Redistribution plays a minor part in his social philosophy, and then only as part of the machinery of macroeconomic stabilization, not as a means to an ideal goal such as equality.

The state has only a limited incentive to guarantee the value of money. The reason is that it can always produce the money necessary to defray its expenses, either by debasing the coinage when money is metal or by printing more of it when it is paper.

He attributed the stupidity of Conservatism to its attachment to the hereditary principle. This also explained the inefficiency of many British firms. British capitalism was dominated by third-generation men.

Keynes emphatically rejected socialism as an economic remedy for the ills of capitalism. Both classical economists and socialists, he often said, believed in the same 'laws of economics'. But whereas the former regarded them as true and inevitable, the latter saw them as true and intolerable. Keynes proposed to show they were not true.

Keynes rejected Labour's anti-élitism. He felt that the intellectual elements in the Labour party will '[n]ever exercise adequate control; too much will always be decided by those who do not know at all what they are talking about'. The Conservatives were much better off in this respect, since 'the inner ring of the party can almost dictate the details and the technique of policy'.

Capitalism rests precisely on this endless expansion of wants. That is why, for all its success, it remains so unloved. It has given us wealth beyond measure, but has taken away the chief benefit of wealth: the consciousness of having enough.

Keynes had his own Utopia which inspired his work as an economist, expressed notably in his essay, 'Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren', published in 1930.

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, With all the freaks of wanton wealth array'd— In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, The toiling pleasure sickens into pain; And, e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks if this be joy.

He had no doubt that fluctuations in business activity could be prevented by appropriate monetary policy.

In The General Theory, money still retains its power to disturb the real economy. But its disturbing power arises from its function as a store of value rather than as a means of exchange. This had the further consequence of calling into question the reliability of monetary policy as an instrument of economic management.

Indeed, we are slowly reverting to the conditions of earlier times, when societies were divided into a small class of rentiers and a large class of servants, without, however, the hierarchical structure which made such inequality of status more palatable.