John Kenneth Galbraith - The Great Crash, 1929 (1954)

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The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Despite a flattering supposition to the contrary, people come readily to terms with power. There is little reason to think that the power of the great bankers, while they were assumed to have it, was much resented. But as the ghosts of numerous tyrants, from Julius Caesar to Benito Mussolini will testify, people are very hard on those who, having had power, lose it or are destroyed. Then anger at past arrogance is joined with contempt for the present weakness. The victim or his corpse is made to suffer all available indignities.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences.

John Kenneth Galbraith
SOME YEARS, like some poets, and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year.

John Kenneth Galbraith
One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Our political life favors the extremes of speech; the man who is gifted in the arts of abuse is bound to be a notable, if not always a great figure.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Both of these measures were on the side of increasing spendable income, though unfortunately they were largely without effect. The tax reductions were negligible except in the higher income brackets; businessmen who promised to maintain investment and wages, in accordance with a well-understood convention, considered the promise binding only for the period within which it was not financially disadvantageous to do so.

John Kenneth Galbraith
But there is still a considerable difference between a failure to do enough that is right and a determination to do much that is wrong.

John Kenneth Galbraith