I'm listening to the part 1 now. Some great quotes (paraphrased), and this is just in the first five minutes. ~ Ilene
James: The system that we live under is unstable. It's corruptible, it's endangered, and its destiny is our responsibility. It depends on us and cannot be entrusted to some ethereal, intangible force that we might call the market…
The two forces are politics and law. Politics, to give us a coherent government in the interest in the large republic, and law to provide a discipline on the behavior of people who wield power, particularly financial power. And that's of course if you're thinking of the crisis we've been going through, it is fundamentally a consequence of the breakdown of law. It is a crisis of our legal system as much as our economic system…
What you had here is a propagation of a massive fraud…. Confidence in the entire system breaks down.
Bill: [The inequality gap is getting greater.] What does that say to you?
James: A central lesson of my work is that inequality is associated with instability… Inequality and instability are symptoms of the same phenomenon…
The kinds of inequalities that we have developed in our society distort every choice that people make in their lives, particularly that young men and women make in their lives…
An extraordinary concentration of wealth is an extraordinary concentration of power. Favorite Adam Smith quote (the only short sentence): "Wealth is power, as Mr. Hobbes says."
Bill Moyers and James K. Galbraith Talk About the Financial Crisis and John Kenneth Galbraith
Courtesy of Jesse's Cafe Americain
