This view that the action of the Federal Reserve authorities in 1927 was responsible for the speculation and collapse which followed has never been seriously shaken. There are reasons why it is attractive. It is simple, and it exonerates both the American people and the economic system from substantial blame... Yet the explanation obviously assumes that people will always speculate if only they can get the money to finance it. Nothing could be farther from the case. There were times before and there has been long periods since when credit was plentiful and cheap—far cheaper than in 1927-29—and when speculation was negligible. Nor was speculation out of control after 1927, except that it was beyond the reach of men who did not want in the least to control it. The explanation is a tribute only to a recurrent preference, in economic matters, for formidable nonsense.

What then is it that, since 2007, has caused Wall Street capitalism's own suicide? At the bottom of this worst financial mess in a century is this: Milton Friedman-Friedrich Hayek libertarian laissez-faire capitalism, permitted to run wild without regulation. This is the root source of today's travails. Both of these men are dead, but their poisoned legacies live on.

No man can control Wall Street. Wall Street is like the ocean. No man can govern it. It is too vast. Wall Street is full of eddies and currents. The thing to do is to watch them, to exercise a little common sense, and … to come out on top.

No matter what anyone tells you, or sells you, there isn’t a single portfolio manager, broker, or financial advisor who can control the primary factor that will determine if our money will last.

We're not beholden to the political whims of a billionaire owner. No-one can tell us what not to say or what not to report.

no one knew what was going on! It was completely open to interpretation. And his guess was as good as anyone’s. My God, probably even better.

None of these seasoned investment professionals could have predicted what would happen next.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency.

Lleve cada uno su culpa y no habrá culpables.

These guys lied to infinity. What I learned from that experience was that Wall Street didn't give a shit what it sold.

Where is the freedom in being perfectly satisfied with your thoughts, intentions, and subsequent actions when they are the product of prior events that you had absolutely no hand in creating?

Ultimately it is not the stock market nor even the companies themselves that determine an investor's fate. It is the investor.

The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America's financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. It is America's political class that, by embracing the dangerously simplistic ideology of deregulation, has responsibility for the present mess.