A Quote by Duncan Green
Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get the growth and everybody benefits. And they'll just repeat that, because if you're a minister or a senior civil servant, you don't have time to read anything anymore. You get very fixed in your views.
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Lunches don't get free just because you don't see the prices on the menu. And economists don't get popular by reminding people of that.
[Buckminster Fuller ] never got past his freshman year [in Harvard], because the guy was an insane womanizer and he did parties every night, never studied anything, never took a note, didn't care about anything and just had a blast. So they said, "We gotta let you go. You get zeros all the time." Today it wouldn't even matter, because they don't care if you can read.
The generally accepted view is that markets are always right -- that is, market prices tend to discount future developments accurately even when it is unclear what those developments are. I start with the opposite view. I believe the market prices are always wrong in the sense that they present a biased view of the future.
I lead a very normal life. I'm just so happy being a mother that everything else revolves around that. If a movie falls through or a TV show doesn't get picked up, I'm pretty easygoing about it because I'm just like, 'Yay, I get to be with my kids more!'
When you've got a lot of slaves at your command, you tend to get a little bit fat. You tend to get a little bit lazy. You tend to get a little incompetent because there's not much that you do for yourself anymore.
It's just such a freeing thing to set these great challenges for yourself, to travel, to learn more about the world, to just go out there and get crazy and get free and get strong.
When my parents were divorced in the late '70s, early '80s, the climate was that you should screw over your ex as much as possible - get the worst lawyer in the world, all that. That's not what people are out to do anymore. It feels cruddy to try and destroy each other just because you're breaking up.
I don't like to read anything on the radio for the very first time, because I don't have any notion of a reaction. When I read it out loud, then I get an idea of that, and more of an idea of how to read.
I read a bunch of books about Mengele because he was pretty sick. That was how 'Angel Of Death' came about. I know why people misinterpret it, just because we don't say Nazism is very bad. They get this knee-jerk reaction to it.
There is a small minority of well-educated people with relatively sensible views on economics, and an extremely tiny minority of economists with highly sensible views. Then there's everybody else. ... To win, a politician needs to please the median voter. It makes little difference if a few thousand economists think you a fool.
Brand-name growth stocks ordinarily command the highest p/e ratios. Rising prices beget attention, and vice versa - but only to a point. Eventually their growth rate can diminish as results revert towards normal. Maybe not in all cases, but often enough to make a long-term bet. Bottom line: I wouldn't want to get caught in a rush for the exit, much less get left behind. Only when big growth stocks fall into the dumper from time to time am I inclined to pick them up - and even then, only in moderation.
There's no destination. There's no getting anywhere. There's just the going. The key to life is to make the going really fun. Because people that are like, “If I just get to this, then boom!” And then they get there and there's this dawning of an afterwards. Whereas I'm just always in the going. And it's not a frantic going like, “I gotta keep going or I'm gonna go nuts!” I can not do anything for weeks or months if I need to and just sit and read books or watch movies. I'm just as fine consuming and absorbing new art as I am trying to make it. But it's all in the going.
I will pick a raft of cartoons. And then later, it'll come time to run this cartoon. And I'll look at it, and I won't quite get it anymore. Because sometimes the grenade goes off in the moment, and then it doesn't repeat down the line.
Everybody is an expert in giving advice on how you cannot do something. So forget about everybody. And then, when you encounter a hurdle-and I do that every week-view it as an opportunity, not the end of the world. Do whatever you need to do to get past it quickly. If you believe in your dream, you'll definitely get there.
I was a very senior minister in the Howard government and I sat around this particular table [in the prime ministerial office] in many discussions. The difference between being a senior minister and the prime minister is that ultimately the buck does stop with the prime minister and in the end the prime minister has to make those critical judgement calls and that's the big difference.
I mean, really, compared to a senior civil servant, I'm very modestly paid!
