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161 " the financial system is so genuinely complex and so many of the relationships within it are non-linear, even chaotic. "
― Niall Ferguson , The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
162 " striving to be a master of the universe "
163 " The rationale for the FDA’s rigid standards is to avoid the sale of a drug like thalidomide. But the unintended consequence is almost certainly to allow many more people to die prematurely than would have died from side-effects under a less restrictive regime. We count and recount the costs of such side-effects. We do not count the costs of not allowing new drugs to be made available. "
― Niall Ferguson , The Great Degeneration
164 " Why exactly has social mobility declined in the United States in the past thirty years, so that the probability has more than halved that a man born into the bottom 25 per cent of the income distribution will end his life in the top quartile?13 Once the United States was famed as a land of opportunity, where a family could leap from ‘rags to riches’ in a generation. But today, if you are born to parents in the bottom income quintile, you have just a 5 per cent chance of getting into the top quintile without a college degree. "
165 " This book is about the causes of our stationary state. It is inspired by Smith’s insight that both stagnation and growth are in large measure the results of ‘laws and institutions’. Its central thesis is that what was true of China in Smith’s day is true of large parts of the Western world in our time. It is our laws and institutions that are the problem. The Great Recession is merely a symptom of a more profound Great Degeneration. "
166 " To demonstrate that Western institutions have indeed degenerated, I am going to have to open up some long-sealed black boxes. The first is the one labelled ‘democracy’. The second is labelled ‘capitalism’. The third is ‘the rule of law’. And the fourth is ‘civil society’. Together, they are the key components of our civilization. "
167 " the creditor could draw a bill on the debtor and either use the bill as a means of payment in its own right or obtain cash for it at a discount from a banker willing to act as broker. "
168 " There were no cheques; instructions were given orally and written in the bank’s books. There was no interest; depositors were given discrezione (in proportion to the annual profits of the firm) to compensate them for risking their money.33 "
169 " The life of a hunter-gatherer is indeed, as Thomas Hobbes said of the state of nature, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. "
170 " fight over scarce resources (food and fertile women) "
171 " Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the where-withal: call it what you like, money matters. "
172 " most money is invisible, little more than numbers on a computer screen? "
173 " the Bank’s proper role in a crisis as the ‘lender of last resort’, to lend freely, albeit at a penalty rate, to combat liquidity crises.42 "
174 " tranche "
175 " fraught "
176 " as masters of the bond market, the Rothschilds were already more feared than loved. Reactionaries on the Right lamented the rise of a new form of wealth, higher-yielding and more liquid than the landed estates of Europe’s aristocratic elites. As Heinrich Heine discerned, there was something profoundly revolutionary about the financial system the Rothschilds were creating: "
177 " money: a unit of account, a store of value - portable power. "
178 " The gold standard had its advantages, no doubt. Exchange rate stability made for predictable pricing in trade and reduced transaction costs, while the long-run stability of prices acted as an anchor for inflation expectations. Being on gold may also have reduced the costs of borrowing by committing governments to pursue prudent fiscal and monetary policies. "
179 " Today, banking assets (that is, loans) in the world’s major economies are equivalent to around 150 per cent of those countries’ combined GDP. "
180 " assets "