Market Outcomes Quotes

I believe, in the stock market - that's one of my fields - that most people are irrational. And to be irrational, you can be irrational in so many different ways that, practically, the result is indeterminate.

When consumers do not take full advantage of efficiency gains, it is because they are weighing other factors that influence their decision making. When the federal government arbitrarily places one of those factors over others, it makes consumers worse off.

In practice, a good deal of the outcomes produced by the market reflect nothing more than luck - good or bad.

Developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets.

I am one of the most successful economists, according to what markets tell us, though most of my professional colleagues, who are much keener to accept market outcomes than I am, would dismiss me as a crank or - the worst of all abuses among economists - a 'sociologist.'

One thing that is clearly not maximized by free markets is equality. I am talking not about that pale substitute for equality known as equality of opportunity but about equality itself.

Wall Street is where prophets tell us what will happen and profits tell us what did happen.

The majority of short term trading results are just random. In the long term the money ends up with those that can trade and manage risk.

Contemporary capitalist polities need to accept that inequality and insecurity will continue to be the inevitable results of market operations and find ways to shield citizens from their consequences—while somehow still preserving the dynamism that produces capitalism’s vast economic and cultural benefits in the first place.

What is certain is that plurality and diversity are not, and never can be, a natural 'byproduct' of unregulated market forces.

Markets are not static entities that are 'intervened' in (for good or bad) but are outcomes of public and private interactions.

In 10 years, ... you're going to see the most valuable economy in the world -- the largest economy in the world -- is going to be a country run by communists. The Chinese seem to be very good at capitalism. And this is going to have fundamental problems and present an identity crisis for the United States. Because for a long time, free markets coincided with liberties such as free speech, free press, free religion. And all of a sudden, this equation is going to be decoupled. And when it gets decoupled, we might find that democracy, the multitude of voices, actually impedes capitalism because a state that does not have any pretense of limited government can very quickly mandate a regulatory framework for drones, for electric cars, for self-driving cars, for any new innovation where they feel that they can leapfrog Western societies. And this is a very unique thing in the American experience. And this is why it's very important to think of American capitalism as an operating system and not as an ideology. Because when you think about it as an ideology, you can have good politics make for very, very bad policy. That market outcomes and democratic voices and battles for votes can end up stifling progress.