Voices of Madmen in Authority Distilling Their Frenzy

“When policy-makers have already witnessed a significant move in asset values, and are confident in what that move means for the outlook, it should be prepared to adjust policy accordingly. The central bank must be responding to its assessment of what an already observed movement in asset prices will mean for output and inflation.”

- Timothy Geithner, at the NY Association for Business and Economics.

“Monetary policy itself cannot sensibly be directed at reducing imbalances.”

- Timothy Geithner, at the Global Financial Imbalances Conference in London.

“To do otherwise would run the risk that monetary policy would be too accommodative, pulling resources from the future in a way that would alter the trajectory for the growth of the capital stock, perhaps amplifying the imbalances, and compromising the price stability.”

- Timothy Geithner, at the Japan Society Corporate Luncheon in New York City.

"...in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

- John Maynard Keynes, General Theory