Economists From The United States

"Rarely is there money in the federal bureaucracy for the cultural and environmental needs of the Natives. I find it ironic however, that federal monies always miraculously appear to study and develop coal strip miners, uranium mines and nuclear waste dumps on Reservations."

"Just because the coal exists, do they have to strip mine it? Just because the water flows, does that mean they have to dam it? Just because the trees are there, does that mean they have to cut them? At what point do we restrain ourselves in this society so that something is left because it has value on its own?"

"We have a lot of teachings and language about how a people can live a thousand years in the same place and not destroy things. The phrase anishinaabe akiing, for example, means the land to which the people belong. It’s not the same thing as private property or even common property. It has to do with a relationship that a people has to a place—a relationship that reaffirms the sacredness of that place…"

"And in our covenant with the Creator, we understand that it is not about managing their behavior—it’s about managing ours, because we’re the ones who cause extinction of species. We’re the youngest species, and we don’t necessarily have the most smarts. We’ve bungled up along the way, and we acknowledge these mistakes in our stories and in our history as Indian people. The question is whether you have the humility and the commitment to get some learning out of these experiences."

"George W Bush is definitely the worse of two evils, to use the vernacular of the Green Party. Few of us thought it possible for him to be in office today, and we are still stunned."

"The largest party in America: the more than 50% of the American electorate who don't vote"

"What gives corporations like Conoco, Shell, Exxon, Daishowa, ITT, Rio Tinto Zinc, and the World Bank the right which supersedes or is superior to my human right to live on my land, or that of my family, my community, my nation, our nations, and to us as women? What law gives that right to them? Not any law of the Creator or of Mother Earth. Is that right contained within their wealth? Is that right contained within their wealth, which was historically acquired immorally, unethically through colonialism and imperialism and paid for with the lives of millions of people, species of plants, and entire ecosystems? They should have no such right. And we clearly, as women and as indigenous peoples, demand and will recover that right-the right of self-determination, to determine our own destiny and that of our future generations."

"I will argue that native societies' knowledge surpasses the scientific and social knowledge of the dominant society in its ability to provide information and a management style for environmental planning. Frankly, these native societies have existed as the only example of sustainable living in North America for more than 300 years."

"There was a view at that time which is, to a great extent, maintained today: that only those Christian nations had rights to the land. That only those who were in the folds of the church and were in the folds of Christ had rights to the land, and the rest of the vast majority of the world, who were not Christians, did not have rights to land on par with those who were Christians. That is why the church became a "handmaiden to colonialism.""

"The Catholic Church was one of the architects of colonialism as we have come to know it today, because it provided the philosophical and religious underpinnings through which colonialism could continue and be justified in the eyes of God."

""Minobimaatisiiwin," or the "good life," is the basic objective of the Anishinaabeg and Cree³ people who have historically, and to this day, occupied a great portion of the north-central region of the North American continent. An alternative interpretation of the word is "continuous rebirth." This is how we traditionally understand the world and how indigenous societies have come to live within natural law. Two tenets are essential to this paradigm: cyclical thinking and reciprocal relations and responsibilities to the Earth and creation."

"The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact is that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would probably be the Indians."

"I have heard that a number of times in my life. "You guys should get over it, it happened a long time ago." You cannot get over it if you are still in the same circumstance as a consequence of what happened a hundred years ago. You cannot get over it if you are still in exactly the same relationship as you were a hundred years ago. Some try to keep their trees and some try to take them."

"The white man, or the American government, has a way of saying they are sorry, which is to pay you. That's pretty much their approach. Now what our elders have said in our reservation and in Indian country in general is that actually the only compensation for land is land. That you cannot pay us with money that you took, that you made off of our land. That's kind of the analysis that goes behind that. Because the only thing that is actually of value to our community is the land itself. It is not the compensation."

"Today, on a worldwide scale, we remain in the same situation as one hundred years ago, only with less land and fewer people."

"If private property has found safe haven in the Fifth Amendment, where is common property equally protected?"

"The rights of the people to use and enjoy air, water, and sunlight are essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These most basic human rights have been impaired by those who discharge toxic substances into the air or water, thereby taking life, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness. These rights are also damaged by those who cause a crash of our fish or destroy our oceans. Such "taking" must be recognized as a fundamental wrong in our system of laws, just as a taking of private property is a fundamental wrong."

"It's hard to imagine those who framed the U.S. Constitution could have imagined the U.S. at the millennium. It's harder yet to imagine what we'll pass on, if we don't think of the seventh generation from now."

"There is a peculiar kind of hatred in the northwoods, a hatred born of living with with three generations of complicity in the theft of lives and land. What is worse is that each day, those who hold this position of privilege must come face to face with those whom they have dispossessed. To others who rightfully should share in the complicity and the guilt, Indians are far away and long ago. But in reservation border towns, Indians are ever-present."

"the poverty of dispossession is almost overwhelming. So is the poverty of complicity and guilt. That shame combined with guilt and a feeling of powerlessness, creates an atmosphere in which hatred buds, blossoms and flourishes. The hatred passes from father to son and from mother to daughter. Each generation feels the hatred and it penetrates deeper to justify a myth. Norman Grist suffered from Indian Hating Disease. He had it bad, knotted tightly and pungently in his gut"

"Besides his business activities, Dr. Kaufman is active in a number of public and educational organizations, including New York University, Tel-Aviv University, the Institute of International Education, the Norton Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, the UJA Federation, the Animal Medical Center, the Economic Club of New York, and the International Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences."

"[A]n economy cannot grow and thrive without a strong commercial and investment banking infrastructure. Without the ability to create debt and equity instruments, the world's economies would not have advanced beyond their most rudimentary forms."

"[R]icher nations have larger stock and bond markets than poorer ones, and the assets of financial intermediaries are much larger in relation to GDP."

"[F]inancial markets can be considered one of the great wonders of the world."

"[T]he most striking feature of America's Gilded Age banking and financial markets is their lack of regulation. Wall Street was periodically upended by... colorful figures such as , Jim Fiske, and Jay Gould to manipulate prices and corner markets. The only force countervailing against such panics was a handful of more responsible investors, most notably J. P. Morgan... [who] engineered a successful rescue operation after the ... That episode inspired Congress to begin... plans for a central bank. After all, Morgan couldn't live forever."

"[F]inancial markets have evolved at least as dramatically as... manufacturing, work, technology, education, and business regulation since the turn of the previous century."

"The federal made some efforts at regulation in 1900, by passing the Gold Standard Act, which allowed state banks to set up branches in small towns and ended the bimetalism debate by establishing gold as the only redeemable metal. Still, the vast majority of banks were local, single unit operations, and access to capital and credit... increasingly difficult as... business enterprises expanded rapidly."

"[F]inancial markets are... a microcosm of the people and societies they serve. ...The extremes of market movements reflect the extremes of human nature and human emotion—from optimism and elation to pessimism and despair. In financial markets—as in life—rationality prevails most of the time."

"[T]he nation's middle class was about to embark on an educational revolution that would help boost incomes to unimagined levels over the next three generations. ...Along with the obvious benefits to... individuals, education yielded enormous social and economic returns. Economists have found universal public education in America to be one of the leading engines of economic growth."

"In 1900, industrial workers toiled 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and earning an average of $375 dollars a year. ...[W]orking conditions were typically unsanitary, unsafe, and often fatal, and there were few protections—whether from unions (...a meager 5 percent of industrial workers), employers, or government. ...[S]tate and federal governments frequently trotted out their armed militias to help suppress striking laborers. ...[W]hites lived an average of only 47 years, blacks a mere 33."

"In the 1890s and 1810s corporate consolidation inspired an enormous public outcry against the "trusts" (...big business). Newspapers overflowed with editorial deriding... "robber barons," and for the first time in American history the federal government stepped in to regulate... First came the ... designed to limit discriminatory railroad rates, and then the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890—Congresses' first attempt to constrain monopolistic practices. In practice, both acts proved to be weak against the predominant power of big business. For decades, the courts in effect made regulatory policy in how they interpreted... these two..."

"Salomon's growth over the next generation would astound even its most optimistic partners. ...And as we would all see to our amazement, Salomon's rise was reflected in broader and equally dramatic transformations in the financial markets—as credit burgeoned, financial crises occasionally rocked the markets, prices and interest rates moved with new volatility, institutions underwent massive shifts, and monetary policy emerged as the dominant force in sustaining economic growth."

"Billy Salomon... along with Charles Simon and Sidney Homer predicted... that research would become a critical function of the firm. ... Sidney was given a free hand in creating a bond market research operation. Years later, he wrote a... memoir... Fun with Bonds. Sidney was taken into the firm as a general partner when he was nearly 60 years old. ...such a step would be impossible today ...Sidney wrote with great clarity. ...I later came to appreciate his great historical sensibilities when he asked me to review and edit a draft of a book... A History of Interest Rates... covering 40 centuries and 40 nations. When Sidney and I met... he was looking for an assistant to help him build a research department devoted solely to money and bond markets."

"In 1900, two-thirds of the nation's... citizens still lived in rural communities... But that was changing rapidly (by 1920 more than half of all Americans lived in cities), thanks in large part to the explosive growth of manufacturing. ...[T]wo-thirds of the nation's output was in manufactured goods, even though manufacturing employed less than a quarter of the work force. The average plant producing petroleum, iron and steel, and textiles (the three leading industries)... were belied by the behemoth factories... Carnegie... christened the new century by selling his sprawling steel interests to J. P. Morgan, who promptly assembled the $1.4 billion United States Steel Corporation in 1901, the nation's first billion-dollar industry. Still, American manufacturing was then churning out a tiny fraction—roughly 1 percent...—of what today's cleaner and enormously more efficient plants produce."

"[D]uring the ... the federal government took large strides to regulate corporate America. ...[T]he federal government managed to break up several trusts (including the , American Tobacco, and ) and to establish the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. In our time, business consolidation is evoking no similar reaction."

"Dr. Doom is back—and age has done nothing to soften his views. ...In a speech on Wednesday evening to the National Economists Club in Washington... Kaufman argued that efforts to stabilize the financial system following the financial crisis may actually have heightened risks by encouraging more debt and increasing concentration among too-big-to-fail institutions. .. that financial innovations, such as securitization, have mainly spurred an explosion of debt, much of it for speculative purposes. ...As the quantity of credit has exploded, its quality has fallen... Deregulation fundamentally changed... from the era of clear divides between commercial and investment banking and government-set interest-rate caps. Regulation has been insufficient to balance “entrepreneurship and fiduciary responsibility,”... which was checked when Wall Street firms were partnerships, with partners’ net worth on the line."

"[A] balance sheet is a snapshot of one moment in time, and thus presents a very limited view... To be a good banker, therefore, a business is much more than its balance sheet."

"The credit approval process began with the analysis of balance sheets and profit and loss statements. For those who know how to unlock their secrets, these documents can contain hidden traps, as I soon discovered—and was later reminded by some of the more spectacular credit problems of recent decades. Balance sheets tend to overstate assets and understate liabilities. Inventories commonly are assigned a large cash value after they have become obsolete, while receivables that are ostensibly current are quite often in arrears. Inadequate reserves constitute yet another common weakness that is poorly reflected... A receivable is a current asset, but it could be a slow asset."

"[A] profit and loss statement is not simply a collection of figures, but rather—for the perceptive banker—a window into the nuts and bolts of the business, from its method of operation to its management philosophy."

"[G]ood bankers understand the shortcomings of accounting and know how to correct for them."

"I take great pride in being an American. Consequently, when financial excess threatens our economic moorings, and thus our extraordinary dynamic and pluralistic nation, I have often spoken out for saner behavior and more effective policies."

"What fascinated me about Drucker, and still does, is how he infuses his broad perspective on business issues with philosophical and historical considerations."

"The professor that had the most influence on me was Marcus Nadler. ...As a teacher he had a rare ability to break down complex subjects into more palatable and understandable points. ...[H]e had a great capacity to simplify, to turn abstract ideas into practical applications. ...His lectures helped shape my belief that financial institutions and markets must balance entrepreneurial drive with responsibility. And his fairness and openness to opposing points of view influenced me to conclude that no one school of economic thought has a monopoly on wisdom."

"Often the real value of management decisions does not become apparent until many years later. Perhaps what we should do is try to analyze the impact of decisions in any one period on longer-term performance. In the political arena, for example, why should we emphasize the skill and acumen of national policy-makers only on the new initiatives they introduce and legislate? Sometimes the events that do not materialize are more important than those that do. We should try to ascertain what decisions political leaders are undertaking that will benefit their nations subsequent to their terms in office."

"Judgements on the performance of our economy require a clearly defined objective. Too often... there are multiple and contradictory objectives. Unless we are clear on our... objectives, we are not able to evaluate performance as good or bad..."

"The current plethora of instant interpretations tends to emphasize the near-term without adequate regard for longer-term objectives. The problem is compounded by the compressed time scales within which business and government function."

"The proliferation of credit instruments, financing techniques, and vast matrices of trading and investing opportunities requires highly objective evaluations of risks and rewards, and a sense of historical perspective, if excessive risk taking is to be avoided."

"Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders and billionaire are on the same page. They both point to the stark reality that American workers have experienced sluggish to nonexistent wage growth for years as a crisis for American capitalism. The great American wage repression is so bad that the United States leads rich nations in allowing 25% of our jobs to pay close to . In most major developed countries that share is in the single digits."

"Standing against the chronic American problem of low-wage employers are three forces: embattled trade unions, too-slow minimum wage hikes, and elements of the tax code, principally the (EITC). One reason these policies don't help raise wages more is that each policy, acting alone, undermines the other. People can't live on the minimum wage and the EITC suppresses wage growth. Weak trade unions means weak political mobilization for both policies. But to be effective, EITC and minimum wage have to be included in the same , in the same sentence, and even in the same breath. Some activists and politicians—mostly Democrats I am afraid—are working very hard to help poor and low-income people. They have an increase in the minimum wage and expansion of the EITC. But no bill has them linked together. Why do they need to be linked?"

"Merely expanding the EITC will continue to subsidize low-wage employers and drive down market wages. Indeed, there is no bigger supporter of the EITC than low-wage employers. For instance, the funds nonprofit organizations such as the and the to expand EITC outreach. The economic dynamic makes it no question that an EITC should be paired with higher minimum wages and increased bargaining power for workers so that employers can't lower wages when their workers get a low-wage subsidy."