Market Function Quotes

When Wal-Mart brings water down to the Katrina victims, it's not doing that to be nice; it's doing it to make larger profits and to increase the value of its shares. If its actions are not accomplishing those objectives, the shareholders can sue the executives, and sue them successfully, because it is illegal for them to act on behalf of any other reason than increasing the value of their shares. There is nothing wrong with that. That is the way that they were created and the way we want them to function to increase prosperity in the market.

Short-sellers perform a useful function in the market as conduits of negative information, and shorts often complain that they are discriminated against by regulators.

In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view.

Free markets work better when information is available.

The government needs to work to improve how markets perform.

No individual anonymous participant can influence the prices and therefore you really can speculate in the market without paying attention to morality. That's one of the positive features of markets. That's why they function.

So everybody has some information. The function of the markets is to aggregate that information, evaluate it, and get it incorporated into prices.

The question is really how do we think seriously about this mechanism called a market. It ought to be determining not values but prices.

But joint pressure from states like Germany, Italy and France could mean a move in this direction. Because something very fundamental is on the line: freedom of movement. I can't think of any common market that could function without it.

We should never lose sight of the underlying essence of a market-a place where buyers and sellers come together. Every other feature-whether crafted by tradition or technology-exists only to serve that primary purpose.

But we have to ask ourselves, what's the purpose of the stock market? It's supposed to be a source of capital for growing business. It's lost that purpose.

Well look, no one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others, but that is a function of capitalist markets.

A vital function of the free market is to penalize inefficiency and misjudgment and to reward efficiency and good judgment. By distorting economic calculations and creating illusory profits, inflation will destroy this function.

We need to question technology to insure that markets continue to perform their fundamental purposes.