The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been w… - Milton Friedman

The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening — one of the most unfortunate consequences of the growth of government paternalism.

To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the Central Bankers.

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.

Just as banks all around the country were closing, the Fed raised the discount rate; that's the rate they charge for loans to banks. Bank failures consequently increased spectacularly. We might have had an economic downturn in the thirties anyway, but in the absence of the Federal Reserve System—with its enormous power to make a bad situation worse—it wouldn't have been anything like the scale we experienced.