The dilemma posed by a choice between rules and men largely begs the question. There are, to be sure, times when rules, constraints, commitments, con… - Charles Poor Kindleberger

A follow-the-leader process develops as firms and households see that others are profiting from speculative purchases. ‘There is nothing as disturbing to one’s well-being and judgment as to see a friend get rich.’ Unless it is to see a nonfriend get rich.

The explanation of this book is that the 1929 depression was so wide, so deep, and so long because the international economic system was rendered unstable by British inability and U.S. unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it by discharging five functions:<p>(1) maintaining a relatively open market for distress goods;
(2) providing countercyclical, or at least stable, long­ term lending;
(3) policing a relatively stable system of exchange rates;
(4) ensuring the coordination of macroeconomic policies;
(5) acting as a lender of last resort by discounting or otherwise providing liquidity in financial crisis.

We were conscious of a great sense of excitement about the plan. Marshall himself was a great, great man — funny, odd but great — Olympian in his moral quality. We'd stay up all night, night after night. The first work ever done that I know about in economics on computers used the Pentagon's computers at night for the Marshall Plan. I had a tremendous sense of gratification from working so hard on it.