The Ledger, every show

“I can assure you that your experience is not the experience of quite a number of the nation's major law firms. It is not the experience of quite a number of the nation's business leaders. It is not the experience of quite a number of the nation's universities …”

“I believe very strongly that by undermining the rule of law, On which contracts exchange and property depend by alienating the rest of the world and by pitting some groups of Americans against other groups of Americans and devaluing the idea of unity and commo…”

“And what you get is a loss in the 30 trillion dollar range as the present value as estimated by markets of what's being done.”

“I do believe that it is fundamentally not new under the sun, just new in America. That it is the Juan Perón approach, which is very familiar to students of Latin American history in particular, and that the general experience of that approach is that its leade…”

“My own view, and I've said this many times, is that what Samuel Johnson said about second marriage is true about soft landings. They represent the triumph of hope over experience, and I don't think we're likely to be able to bring inflation down to its target …”

“Increases in tariffs of this magnitude, the overwhelming part of them will be passed on to consumers.”

“We are trading like an emerging market country right now.”

“We had given them MFN status 15 years before. No one. They had MFN status. They had it for 15 years. There was not a single reduction in a barrier to Chinese trade. So the way in which you're describing it is just, bears no resemblance to what it was.”

“My belief is that the revenue loss from the Doge's destruction of Significant part of the functioning of our nation's tax collection system is likely to exceed in terms of contributing more to the deficit than any savings that it successfully realizes.”

“I think there's a larger probably risk that we don't really have inflation on a secure path down below three and a half, and that the Fed thinks it's got it under control, and it doesn't. And it's gonna have to go back to, ah, raising, ah, rates.”

“There's never been a time when inflation was above four and unemployment was below four and the U.S. Economy didn't go into recession before that situation was resolved.”

“The government's finances are not on a sustainable path and won't be on a sustainable path until we figure out how to raise the revenue that a society facing grave national security threats and aging population and a rising price of medical care and education …”

“And that is a embarrassment that the grade point average of the average student at Harvard University is above 3.7.”

“Part of the reason why inflation accelerated through much of twenty-twenty-two was that it was still being spent in twenty-twenty-two, and some of it is still going to be spent in twenty-twenty-three, and that's part of why the economy has seemed so strong, ev…”

“Ultimately we are on an unsustainable path. And my view is that we're going to have to raise revenues quite substantially because I don't think there's going to be a lot of scope For cutting spending, given the way in which our population is aging, given the w…”

“So if we don't make grave mistakes, I think the dollar's gonna remain the world's reserve currency.”

“The data are very dramatic that the gaps in life expectancy between the top 10% of the population and the bottom 10% of the population have widened massively.”

“Have you looked at the data on export flows from the United States to China? It actually did happen at a quite substantial rate.”

“Factually, less than a quarter of people with incomes over ten million dollars are audited.”

“Inflation was never on an underlying basis anything like eight or nine. It was like five artificially pushed up by used cars and airline fares and a bunch of stuff like that gasoline. And the thing about stuff that mean reverts is that it mean reverts. And so …”

“We used to be a country, 60 years ago, where four percent of men between 25 and 54 were not working, and now we're a country where 14% are not working at any point in time, and a quarter of them don't work for more than three months Almost within a two year pe…”

“We have a gap between taxes that are owed, that everybody agrees are owed under the current law, and taxes actually collected that will total eight trillion dollars over the next 10 years.”

“And the number of babies born in China has fallen by just about half in the last six years.”

“There's a bridge. The bridge goes over the Charles River. It's 362 feet long. It had been around for a hundred years. It needed to be fixed. It did need to be fixed. 62 months. Five years and two months with one lane of traffic closed in order to renovate a 36…”

“There's nothing in the current situation that says to me that we need to get rates anywhere near where Volcker took them.”

“Forbes looked at its 20, looked in 2012 Add its 1982 Forbes 400 and found that less than 10% of those who were on the 1982 Forbes 400 were still part of the 20 12 Forbes 400.”