From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When you empower people economically, your social programmes go further. The idea that there is a stark separation between a social program that's sustainable and economic program that's a luxury doesn't fit the reality. When you join economic empowerment to social protection, you get double the benefit.
None of this is new. The Romans traded forward contracts in commodities 2000 years ago; a Dutch fugitive, Isaac le Maire, conducted the first ever bear attack on a stock in 1610, leading also to the first ever regulatory ban on short-selling that same year.
Your corporate's social responsibility is to win. You cannot be generous from an empty wagon! This nonsense about giving when you're broke is ridiculous. Corporate responsibility, first and foremost, is to win. You can then take those resources from winning and allocate them as you see fit. That's not a popular statement, but it's the truth!
I'm surprised that people argue that economic integration causes a loss of identity. In fact, countries get the benefits of their own country (whether it be food, types of goods, technologies) but in-addition, they get the benefits of all the things other countries produce too. Economic integration doesn't remove a country's identity, far from it… rather the range of products, services, instruments and intellectual processes available increases. You keep what you have and add things from abroad. This is not reducing identity, but expanding it.
The representative agent model (and its descendants) imposed a straightjacket that made it difficult to think clearly about what was going on [in the economy]… To me [Stiglitz], the strangest aspect of modern macroeconomics was that the central banks were using a model in which banks and financial markets played no role.
Brands create demand and, most importantly, they create secure demand. If you have a loyal customer, that gives you more security of income, earnings and employment.
Crypto-currency is a means by which people can exchange property in a secure way without the use of a central institution like a bank or the Federal Reserve.
Thanks to monetary policy, business cycles are far less volatile today than they were in the 19th century, when we had huge swings. But if cryptocurrency takes over the way its proponents would like, we could return to the ups and downs of the pre-monetary policy era.
To be a billionaire in America today is less a matter of merit than it is a matter of being at the right place at the right time, and being a beneficiary of a set of rules designed to benefit billionaires.
The social sector offers this middle-ground where you've got organisations that have a social purpose. They care about the level of service in a real way, but also have the financial disciplines of a for-profit company as they must be sustainable.
Our system has never defined what it means to be 'good' – what is the ideal human being in capitalism? Is it Jeff Bezos? Is it Steve Jobs? They thrived, they profited, are they 'moral'? The ideal human profile of capitalism does not fit with our basic human dignity.
Despite huge and on-going technological advances in electronic transactions technologies, it [paper currency] has remained surprisingly durable, even if its major uses seem to be buried in the world underground and illegal economy.