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Wednesday 21st of January 2026

2008 financial crisis I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system. George W. Bush © 2019 Kwiple.com
2008 financial crisis We are fortunate that, thanks to globalization, policy decisions in the U.S. have been largely replaced by global market forces. Alan Greenspan, 2007 © 2018 Kwiple.com
The arts When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.  Martin Amis © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracy is under siege because its elites have allowed unfettered markets to run roughshod over the postwar social contract, leaving voters trapped in a lethal equilibrium of low growth and rising inequality. Philip Stephens, Financial Times, April 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Global warming The emission of greenhouse gases is an example of a market failure — one business enterprise passing on the real cost of doing business to people who aren't party to that business. That is, most of the rest of us. Kerry Emanuel © 2022 Kwiple.com
Global warming In the past thirty years, humans have added as much CO2 to the atmosphere as they did in the previous thirty thousand. … In the words of the Stern Review, a report commissioned by the British government in 2005, climate change “is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.” Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, November 28, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Globalization We are fortunate that, thanks to globalization, policy decisions in the U.S. have been largely replaced by global market forces. National security aside, it hardly makes any difference who will be the next president. The world is governed by market forces. Alan Greenspan, 2007 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary e-commerce (ē'kom'ərs), n. Killer of jobs, killer of sales tax revenues, killer of local services, killer of local communities, incubator of inequality. © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary free markets (frē mär'kitz), verbal phrase. Once a qualified noun (like free  beer), now a verbal phrase (like Free Willy) meaning to understaff and underfund regulatory agencies and to castrate and eviscerate the remains while fulminating about their size and power. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Rigging markets by using algorithms to collude on prices © 2017 Kwiple.com
Markets Another reason for the concentration of corporate power is political capture. Americans invented modern antitrust policy, and love to rail against “statist” old Europe. But a fascinating study by academics Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon shows that EU markets are, in fact, more competitive. They have lower levels of concentration, lower excess profits, and lower regulatory barriers to entry. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 23, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Markets Demand for low-priced houses grows, so few are built and prices rise; demand for high-priced houses drops, so they're overbuilt and prices fall © 2016 Kwiple.com
Markets In ordinary markets, a vendor can sell their product to a buyer, and once the transaction is complete, each walks away as free from the other as before. Labor markets are different. When workers sell their labor to an employer, they have to hand themselves  over to their boss, who gets to order them around. The labor contract, instead of leaving the seller as free as before, puts the seller under the authority of their boss. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Markets [I]t was not that long ago that we intuitively knew the difference between a market economy and a market society. The former is a way to produce goods and allocate capital. The latter is a place where the economy is the arbiter of everything. Even our social life has a price. As we consider a society in which even our private recesses can be monetized (I'm thinking of the social influencers my daughter's generation watch, who are today's best examples of winner-takes-all economics), we need to pay more atten- tion to those who have nothing to sell. Edward Luce, Financial Times, Mar. 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Markets A market economy inevitably and frequently inflicts serious harm on some citizens. By producing great inequalities in resources among citizens, market capitalism also fosters political inequality among the citizens of a democratic country. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality © 2018 Kwiple.com
Markets The market itself might not be linked to reality any more. It's the ‘greater fool theory’. If there is a greater fool that will buy it from me at a greater price, then I did good. Jordan Belfort, the real Wolf of Wall Street, on the 2017 stock market  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Markets One has to remember three big things about the market economy. The first and most fundamental is that one must not do everything that is profitable. Indeed, there has to be a lengthy list of activities one is not entitled to do. The second is that some of the things one must not do might be legal or, if contrary to law, hard to prevent. The last and most important therefore is that the survival of a civilised society depends on moral restraint, particularly from its leading figures. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, May 2, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Markets People continue to deploy the same justification of market society – that it would secure the personal independence of workers from arbitrary authority – long after it failed to deliver on its original aspiration. … a political agenda that once promised equalizing as well as liberating outcomes turned into one that reinforced private, arbitrary, unaccountable government over the vast majority. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Markets Technology has made markets faster, but arguably not better. It certainly hasn't made them cheaper. As academics such as Thomas Philippon have shown, none of the many technolog- ical “innovations” in the financial markets since 1880 has actually lowered the cost of financial intermediation. Someone is making as much money as ever. Fintech just makes it tougher to see who. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 25, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Markets  What social networks have done to society, trading apps have begun doing to markets. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 25, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Monopoly Today, in America, competition is dying. Consolidation and concentration are on the rise in sector after sector. Concentration threatens our markets, threatens our economy, and threatens our democracy. Elizabeth Warren © 2017 Kwiple.com
Pandemics David Baker, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, noted that, although cancer drugs are also expensive to develop and bring to market, “there will always be people dying of cancer.” But pandemics arrive infrequently and don't necessarily stay for long — characterteristics that make them a commercial liability. “It's one of those cases where a traditional market economy doesn't work so well,” [Amesh] Adalja, [a physician at] Johns Hopkins, said. “Suppose you made a sars antiviral in 2003,” after its 2002-03 run. “You would not have had a return on investment, because sars was gone.” Michael Hutson, The New Yorker, Apr. 13, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Polticial philosophy Many current observers of the inter- national scene foresee a kind of market triumphalism, in which economic forces prevent any nation-state from making real political choices. Self-determination becomes meaningless if the only option is to adopt policies that ensure maximum economic competitiveness. … if there really are no political choices for us to make, then political philosophy, whether national or international in focus, becomes useless, nothing more than fiddling while Rome burns. David Miller, Political Philisophy © 2018 Kwiple.com
Private government We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Gvoernment  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Regulations If the economic history of the past two centuries tells us anything, it is that state regulation is absolutely essential to insure a reasonable level of market competition, to reduce the harm other- wise caused by unregulated firms and markets, and to insure a more just, or at least more acceptable, distribution of the benefits. Without state regulation, political elites and the public at large would soon sweep private business firms and markets into that well-known dustbin of history. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republican kiss-asses A map of his support may coordinate with racist Google searches, but it coordinates even better with deindustrialization and despair, with the zones of economic misery that thirty years of Washington's free-market consensus have brought to the rest of America. Thomas Frank, Rendevous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republican kiss-asses say Claiming market-driven disasters  can only be avoided by making markets stronger and more pervasive is the Right thing to do  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republican kiss-asses say Expecting the Supreme Court to eliminate the minimum wage is the Right thing to do  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Free markets © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Governments can never succeed, markets can never fail © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Let markets rule, ruin and ravage © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Prohibit insurance companies from insuring doctors who perform abortions © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, “I'm in favor of privatization,” or “I'm deeply in favor of public ownership.” I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case. John Kenneth Galbraith © 2019 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Markets can be trusted to strengthen social welfare © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say A rising tide lifts all boats © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union  [A] country needing constant reassurance that it is a nation and not just a market with a flag on it. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 17, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union  More a market, less a democracy  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Technology Information technology is continuing to leap forward; biotechnology is beginning to provide a window into our inner lives – emotions, thoughts, and choices. Together, infotech and biotech will create unprecedented upheavals in human society, eroding human agency and, possibly, subverting human desires. Under such conditions, liberal democracy and free-market economics might become obsolete. Yuval Harari, The Atlantic, October 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
 
Trumpism A map of his support may coordinate with racist Google searches, but it coordinates even better with deindustrialization and despair, with the zones of economic misery that thirty years of Washington's free-market consensus have brought to the rest of America. Thomas Frank, Rendevous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com