It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.
While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity.
Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.
What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.
Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process we have created [a] privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of the income inequality.
I don't know where the stock market is going, but I will say this, that if it continues higher, this will do more to stimulate the economy than anything we've been talking about today or anything anybody else was talking about.
Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently...recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that are not readily assuaged in the short run.
I'm always amazed that my wife can handle different subjects - one day politics, the next day foreign policy. And she always has so much fun doing it. We make a good team.
The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.
Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher asset prices, ... This is the reason that history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.
Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.
People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.
In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset values in financial markets could signal or precipitate an excessive softening in household and business spending.
A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage-market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years.