hvisser

QUOTES

from

the Bible,

Lewis Carroll,

Keynes,

Mandeville,

James Edward Meade,

John Stuart Mill,

Adam Smith,

Jelle Zijlstra,

and next, changing the classification principle, from various authors on

Accountancy,

Bimetallism,

Capital Theory,

Capitalism and Socialism,

Economics,

Economists and Professors in General,

Gender,

Government and Politics,

International Trade, Free Trade,

Islam,

The Dominance of Mathematics,

Merchants and Businessmen,

Money and Banking,

Poverty,

Subsidies

BIBLE

Wie koren achterhoudt, hem vloekt het volk;

maar zegening daalt neer op het hoofd van de verkoper.

Spreuken 11:26

He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.

Proverbs 11:26, King James version

The current American Roman Catholic translation suffers, in my view, from a mistaken attempt to smuggle modern concepts into millennia-old texts:

Him who monopolizes grain, the people curse - but blessings upon the head of him who distributes it!

New American Bible, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/proverbs/proverb11.htm

Wie hunkert naar onrechtmatige winst, vernielt zijn eigen huis; maar wie geschenken haat, zal leven.

Spreuken 15:27

He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.

Proverbs 15:27, King James version

He who is greedy of gain brings ruin on his own house, but he who hates bribes will live.

Proverbs 15:27, New American Bible, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/proverbs/proverb15.htm

LEWIS CARROLL

From Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice, with an introduction and notes by Martin Gardner, Penguin 1971, containing Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass:

“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”

(Alice in Wonderland) p. 120.

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.”

(Alice in Wonderland) p. 161.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said(...), "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, " whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

(Through the Looking Glass) p. 269.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

(Alice in Wonderland) p. 88.

"I beg your pardon?" said Alice.

"It isn't respectable to beg," said the King.

(Through the Looking Glass) p. 280.

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don’t exactly know what they are!

(Through the Looking Glass) p. 197.

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.

(Through the Looking Glass) p. 248.

The prettiest are always further.

(Through the Looking Glass) p. 257

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Just as wars have been the only form of large-scale loan expenditure which statesmen have thought justifiable, so gold-mining is the only pretext for digging holes in the ground which has recommended itself to bankers as sound finance.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Ch. 10.

.. the two most delightful occupations open to those who do not have to earn their living, authorship and experimental farming.

General Theory, Ch. 23.

It is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.

General Theory, Ch. 24.

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

The Collected Writings of J. M. Keynes, VII, The General Theory, p. 383.

BERNARD MANDEVILLE

All Sea-faring Men, especially the Dutch, are like the Element they belong to, much given to loudness and roaring, and the Noise of half a dozen of them, when they call themselves Merry, is sufficient to drown twice the number of Flutes and Violins.

The Fable of the Bees, edited by Phillip Harth, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1970, p. 129.

How Gay and Merry does every Face appear at a well-ordered Ball, and what a Solemn Sadness is observ’d at the Masquerade of a Funeral! But the Undertaker is as much pleas’d with his Gains as the Dancing Master: Both are equally tired in their Occupations, and the Mirth of the one is as much forc’d as the Gravity of the other is affected.

A Search into the Nature of Society, added to The Fable of the Bees in 1723. Harth edn p. 352.

Pride and Vanity have built more Hospitals than all the Virtues together.

An Essay on Charity, and Charity-Schools, added to The Fable of the Bees in 1723, Harth edn p. 269.

JAMES EDWARD MEADE

Nobel Prize Economics 1977

The intelligent radical is anything but an optimistic utopian. He recognizes that the world is a wicked place in which compromise is inevitable. He freely admits that the price mechanism is the worst possible form of economic system except the others, and his stirring political rallying cry is: Two Hearty Cheers for the Price Mechanism.

The Intelligent Radical's Guide to Economic Policy.

JOHN STUART MILL

So much of barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of the most civilised nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their own inconvenience and that of their neighbours, a peculiar currency of their own.

Principles of Political Economy, book III chapter XX § 2, p. 615 Ashley edn., Longmans, Green, and Co., London 1917. First published 1848.

ADAM SMITH

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

Wealth of Nations, Book I Ch. II.

For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins.

Wealth of Nations, Book I Ch. IV.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

Wealth of Nations, Book I Ch. VIII (Everyman’s Library, 1964, p. 70).

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Wealth of Nations, Book I Ch. X (Everyman’s Library, 1964, p. 117).

Apothecaries’ profit is become a bye-word, denoting something uncommonly extravagant.

Wealth of Nations, Book I Ch. X.

.. that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician.

Wealth of Nations, Book IV Ch. III.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

Wealth of Nations, Book IV Ch. VIII.

JELLE ZIJLSTRA

voormalig hoogleraar Vrije Universiteit, minister van EZ, minister van Financien, minister-president en president van DNB

Uit Per slot van rekening: memoires, Uitgeverij Contact, Amsterdam-Antwerpen 1992:

Ook op de kansel tilden de eerwaarde heren soms zwaar aan de problemen van staat en maatschappij. Mijn wantrouwen met betrekking tot hun deskundigheid ter zake heeft toen reeds wortel geschoten. (blz. 10)

.., een probleem dat destijds het mensdom nogal beroerde, maar dat intussen met talloze andere uitermate gewichtige vragen spoorloos is verdwenen. (p. 24)

Alleen in ledigheid worden grote gedachten geboren. (p. 39)

Regeren is bijsturen en niet de hele boel constant op zijn kop willen zetten. (p. 99)

Het kwaliteitskenmerk van regeringsbeleid hoort te zijn Bestendigheid. (p. 115)

Hij was een zeer bevlogen iemand en ik was voor bevlogen en bewogen mensen altijd wat schrikachtig. (p. 178)

Het politieke bedrijf, hoe fascinerend ook, is vaak een hogeschool in taalbederf. (p. 199)

(Over de president van DNB:) Zo'n rustig bestaan; wat doet zo'n president eigenlijk? (p. 200)

Geldcreatie is voor een regering en parlement met hun ingeschapen drang naar meer uitgeven een te gevaarlijk speelgoed. (p. 205)

Kijk uit als een politicus het primaat van de politiek bepleit. (p. 218)

Zoals het recht bewaakt moet worden door een onafhankelijke instantie, de rechterlijke macht, zo moet de waardevastheid van het geld bewaakt worden door een onafhankelijke instantie, de centrale bank. (p. 252).

uit andere bron:

Over lieden met verkeerde meningen:.
De Schepper heeft geen grenzen gesteld aan het menselijk onverstand.
A. Szász, Bankpresident in een roerige periode: Jelle Zijlstra (1918-2001), DNB Magazine 4:1, 2002

ACCOUNTANCY

Accountancy professor at the start of a course at Harvard Business School:
When most of you read accounting statements now, you do not understand them. At the end of this course, you will not believe them.

BIMETALLISM

MISS PRISM: When one has thoroughly mastered the principles of Bimetallism one has the right to lead an introspective life. Hardly before.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.

MABEL CHILTERN: Well, Tommy has proposed to me again. Tommy really does nothing but propose to me. [. . .] At luncheon I saw by the glare in his eye that he was going to propose to me again, and I just managed to check him in time by assuring him that I was a bimetallist. Fortunately I don't know what bimetallism means. And I don't believe anybody else does either. But the observation crushed Tommy for ten minutes. He looked quite shocked.
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband.

CAPITAL THEORY

It is well known that the Venerable Subhuti had a conversation with Buddha on transcendental wisdom which was immortalized as the Vajrachedikaprajñāpāramitā, the so-called “Diamond Sutra”, translated into Chinese around 400 A.D. by Kumarajiva from Kucha (Eastern Turkestan); indeed this was the first printed book in the world. What has only very recently come to light is the fact that despite his virtuous life, Subhuti had some lapses, and was born again in this century. Since the lapses were moderately serious, Subhuti was reborn as an economist, and since he was what Buddha called “a hair-splitting Brahmin” (see Kassapa-Sihanada Sutta), Subhuti was destined to specialize in capital theory.

Amartya Sen, On Some Debates in Capital Theory, Economica 41:163, August 1974, p. 328.

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM

.. the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.

Joan Robinson, Economic Philosophy, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1964, p. 46.

Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn’t work. Bankruptcies and losses, even the threat of bankruptcy, concentrate the mind on prudent behavior.

A.H. Meltzer, Asian Problems and the IMF, Cato Journal 17:3, Winter 1998, p. 269.

Het socialisme probeert de mensen te dwingen beter te zijn dan ze zijn, terwijl het kapitalisme de mensen de vrijheid geeft zich te gedragen als de zwijnen die ze altijd al waren.

Peter Sloterdijk, in een vraaggesprek in Trouw, 14.6.1990.

Ik zie geen hoop voor de wereld en dat heeft mij er gelukkig altijd voor behoed om in het socialisme of dergelijke onzin te geloven.

Gerrit Komrij in een vraaggesprek in NRC Handelsblad, 2 november 1990.

Het huidige kapitalistische systeem is de basis van de beschaving en de enige manier om in de essentiële behoeften van een grote moderne bevolking te voorzien.
Winston Churchill in 1924, geciteerd in Boris Johnson, De Churchill factor, Spectrum, Houten-Antwerpen 2015 blz. 171.

ECONOMICS

De verschillende visies op de werkelijkheid die de economen ontwerpen (.....) ontlenen hun overtuigingskracht ook aan de poëzie. Marx ziet de produktie belichaamd in ‘hoeveelheden gestolde arbeid’. Nederlandse monetaire theoretici laten de geldschepping ‘geabsorbeerd’ worden door de groei van het nationale produkt. Geld is iets dat ‘liquide’ is. Er wordt buitengemeen veel ‘gevloeid’ en ‘gestroomd' in de economie’.

J.J. Klant, Filosofie van de economische wetenschappen.

We humans must deal in fictions of our own making. Whether or not they correspond to God’s Own Universe is something we cannot know.

D.N. McCloskey, Knowledge and persuasion in economics, CUP, Cambridge 1994, blz. 195.

ECONOMISTS AND PROFESSORS IN GENERAL

Im groszen und ganzen sind die Professoren der politischen Ökonomie nichts anderes als die gelehrten Kommis der Kapitalistenklasse.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Werke, Band 39, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1975, S. X.

Un economista es alguien que ve algo en la práctica y quiere saber si es posible en teoría.

Anon.

(An economist is someone who sees something in practice and wants to know whether it is possible in theory)

Today’s economists tend to be open-minded about content, but doctrinaire about form. They are more wedded to their techniques than to their theories. They will believe something when they can model it.

'The other-worldly philosophers', The Economist July 18th 2009

In an old argument between a medical doctor, an engineer and an economist on whose profession is the oldest, the economic profession achieved a resounding victory. The medical doctor said that God created Eve by taking out a rib from Adam. God, therefore, must be a master surgeon, so the medical profession is the oldest. The engineer argued that before God created Adam and Eve, He created the earth out of chaos and confusion. God must be a master engineer, so engineering is the oldest profession. An economist concluded the debate by simply asking: 'Gentlemen, who created chaos and confusion?’.

Yeomin Yoon, Professor of Finance and International Business at Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, in a Letter to the Editor in Financial Times, June 8th 2009.

If a professor thinks what matters most

Is to have gained an academic post

Where he can earn a livelihood, and then

Neglect research, let controversy rest,

He’s but a petty tradesman at the best,

Selling retail the work of other men.

Kalidasa (probably 1st century Chr. era), in John Brough (transl. and introd.), Poems from the Sanskrit, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1968.

Zij had de professor wat potsierlijk gevonden – waren professors dat niet wel meer?

Maria Dermoût, De tienduizend dingen, 10e dr., Querido, Amsterdam 1998 blz. 230.

Economists, who can render the most exciting of material dull, ..
Wookienomics, The Economist Dec 19th 2015

GENDER

(...), und immer diese Männer mit ihren Wichtigkeiten und ihren Witzen zwischen den Wichtigkeiten, (...)

Ingeborg Bachmann, Simultan: Erzählungen, R. Piper & Co. Verlag, München 1991, S. 18. Erstausgabe 1972.

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

see also under Adam Smith

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

Next comes the ruler they love and praise;

Next comes one they fear;

Next comes one with whom they take liberties.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, transl. D.C.Lau, Ch. XVII, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1963.

Si le trésor est vide, l’armée passe à l’ennemi ou tue le roi.
Kauṭilya, l’Arthaśāstra, extraits choisis et publiés avec une introduction par Marinette Dambuyant, Paris: Éditions Marcel Rivière et Cie, 1971, livre VIII Ch. 1, p. 82.
(Kauṭilya was an Indian philosopher and political scientist avant la lettre who is said to have lived roughly from 350 to 275 BCE and to whom the Arthaśāstra or The Science of Wealth is ascribed. Kauṭilya was an advisor to the first emperors of the Maurya Empire (322 – 185 BCE), Chandragupta and Bindusara, and can be seen as the Macchiavelli of his time).

Schiller on the French Revolution of 1789 and the excesses of revolutionary zeal :
-Freiheit und Gleichheit! hört man schallen,
Der ruhge Bürger greift zur Wehr,
Die Straßen füllen sich, die Hallen,
Und Würgerbanden ziehn umher,
Da werden Weiber zu Hyänen
Und treiben mit Entsetzen Scherz,
Noch zuckend, mit des Panthers Zähnen,
Zerreißen sie des Feindes Herz.
-Nichts Heiliges ist mehr, es lösen
Sich alle Bande frommer Scheu,
Der Gute räumt den Platz dem Bösen,
Und alle Laster walten frei.
Gefährlich ist's, den Leu zu wecken,
Verderblich ist des Tigers Zahn,
-Jedoch der schrecklichste der Schrecken,
Das ist der Mensch in seinem Wahn.
Weh denen, die dem Ewigblinden
Des Lichtes Himmelsfackel leihn!
Sie strahlt ihm nicht, sie kann nur zünden
Und äschert Städt und Länder ein.
from Friedrich von Schiller, Das Lied von der Glocke, 1799.

John Kenneth Galbraith on the American delegation at the Economic and Monetary Conference in Londen, June 1933:
The members of the delegation […] included men with both points of view on stabilization [namely a fixed price of gold or not, hv], and these were balanced by some with no point of view at all. […] Senator Key Pittman was interested only in the remonetization of silver and a vacation from the tedium of national Prohibition. He astonished his colleagues by his ability, even when drunk, to hit a distant cuspidor with a large effusion of tobacco juice and to become suddenly, if briefly, sober whenever silver was mentioned. At the official reception he greeted George V and Queen Mary with exceptional informality. ‘King, I’m glad to meet you. And you too, Queen.’ One night at Claridge’s a floor waiter asked James Warburg to accompany him to the floor pantry. Pittman, quite naked, was sitting in the sink under the impression that he was a statue in a fountain. The waiter had failed in the effort to persuade him otherwise.
John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, New York: Bantam Books 1975, pp. 246-7.

(When control of the ANC was formally handed to Mr Mbeki in 1997, Mr Mandela gave a prescient warning:)

The leader must keep the forces together, but you can’t do that unless you allow dissent.

The Economist January 22nd 2005, p. 29.

For centuries now, it has been the fate of the peoples of the East to be ‘discovered’ by the West, with dramatic and usually unpleasant consequences,

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, Granta, London 1992, p. 155.

European policymakers only move at gunpoint, and the only gun around is the market.

Willem Buiter, cited in The Economist Jan 19^th 2013, p. 62.

Die Bären aus einem großen Land waren nicht daran gewöhnt, mit einem kleinen Land Kompromisse zu schließen. Annäherung kannten sie nur in Form des Einmarschierens.
Yoko Tawada, Etüden im Schnee, konkursbuch Verlag Claudia Gehrke, Tübingen 2014, S. 108.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE, FREE TRADE

While the burden remains on our backs

Let the shout for repeal ne’er relax

Till, like Jericho’s wall, Protection shall fall,

And give us our loaf without tax.

Ballad of the National Anti-Corn Law League, 1845

(The actions of the Anti-Corn Law League led to the abolition of the Corn Laws by Britain's Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1846, which ushered in the great era of free trade).

L'effet naturel du commerce est de porter à la paix. Deux nations qui négocient ensemble se rendent réciproquement dépendantes : si l’une a intérêt d’acheter, l’autre a intérêt de vendre; et toutes les unions sont fondées sur des besoins mutuels.

Mais, si l’esprit de commerce unit les nations, il n’unit pas de même les particuliers. Nous voyons que, dans les pays a où l’on n’est affecté que de l’esprit de commerce, on trafique de toutes les actions humaines, et de toutes les vertus morales: les plus petites choses, celles que l’humanité demande, s’y font, ou s’y donnent pour de l’argent.

Montesquieu, De l’Ésprit des lois, 1748, QUATRIÈME PARTIE, LIVRE XX, CHAPITRE II XX:2: De l’esprit du commerce.

ISLAM

Narrated by Abu Huraira.
The Prophet said, "Religion is very easy and whoever overburdens himself in his religion will not be able to continue in that way. So you should not be extremists, but try to be near to perfection and receive the good tidings that you will be rewarded; and gain strength by worshipping in the mornings, the nights."

Sahih Bukhari Volume 1 Book 2 # 39

www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/002-sbt.php

In Mecca and Medina, there are Islamic MacDonalds restaurants, selling Islamic Big Macs. If you have an Islamic high cholesterol diet, you will get Islamic diabetes and Islamic heart attacks.
Yusuf Jha, Money Creation and Debt-Based Finance: A Fundamental Challenge to the Islamic Finance Industry, New Horizon No. 189, Oct.-Dec. 2013, p. 30.

THE DOMINANCE OF MATHEMATICS

Aristotle also criticized those Pythagorean natural philosophers who believed that they had explained a process when they had found a mathematical relationship exemplified in it. According to Aristotle, the Pythagorean approach suffers from exclusive preoccupation with formal causes.
J. Losee, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 4th edn, OUP, Oxford 2001 p. 11.

Keynes' objection to formalism (in his discussion of the causal nexus between M and P in The Theory of Prices (The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Prices 1936, chapter 21, 297-8):
"Too large a proportion of recent 'mathematical' economics [...symbolic pseudo-mathematical methods of formalising a system of economic analysis...] are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols".

Formal theory can be, and is, an escape from truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith, A Look Back: Affirmation and Error, Journal of Economic Issues 23:2, 1989, P. 415

.. the `testing of hypotheses' is frequently merely a euphemism for obtaining plausible numbers to provide ceremonial adequacy for a theory chosen and defended on a priori grounds.
H.G. Johnson, The Keynesian Revolution and the Monetarist Counter-Revolution, American Economic Review May 1971.

Today the economics profession is like the Catholic clergy that refused to translate the bible, so unless you knew Latin you couldn't read it.
Cambridge, UK, economist Ha-Joon Chang on the preponderance of mathematics in economics, in an interview in the Weekend Financial Times, 30 Nov/1 Dec 2013, p.3

The Carlos Diaz-Alejandro rule: For almost any particular conclusion you want to arrive at, there is some economic model that will take you there.
Trade and prices: an attempted summary, Dani Rodrik’s Weblog, 29 April 2007 http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/04/trade_and_price.html

Wat is de vraag die je model je niet toestaat te stellen?
Model, in Nachoem M. Wijnberg, Van groot belang, Atlas Contact, Amsterdam/Antwerpen 2e dr 2017 p. 8

All models are wrong, but some are useful
George Box, statistician, quoted in The Economist 30 March 2019 p. 85

MERCHANTS AND BUSINESSMEN

Homo mercator vix aut numquam Deo placere potest.
(The merchant can scarcely or never be pleasing to God)
Medieval saying.

Men of business have keen sensations but short memories.
W. Bagehot, Lombard Street, 14th edition, John Murray, London 1920, p. 155.

Remember that merchants spend money only in hope of future gain.
Aryasura, The Marvelous Companion: Life Stories of the Buddha, Dharma Publishing, Berkeley 1983; Jataka 22.

MONEY AND BANKING