Maurice Allais

My motivation was an idea of being able to improve the conditions of life, to try to find a remedy to many of the problems facing the world. That's what led me into economics. I saw it as a way of helping people.

It is understandable that the Fed injects cash to avoid the collapse of the stock market, but basically it is bad policy for monetary authorities to intervene to save speculators from bankruptcy. This is not their role.

All science is based on models, and every scientific model comprises three distinct stages: statement of well-defined hypotheses; deduction of all the consequences of these hypotheses, and nothing but these consequences; confrontation of these consequences with observed data.

It may be tripe, but it's my tripe - and I do urge other authors to resist encroachments on their brain-children and trust their own judgment rather than that of some zealous meddler with a diploma in creative punctuation who is just dying to get into the act.