"God wouldn't have made sheep if he didn't expect them to be sheared." - J.P. Morgan
"We will see new records in the not-too-distant future."
Paul H. O'Neill - Treasury Secretary - Septmeber, 1991. Source.
"The country is on the edge of a golden age of prosperity... I think we're not doing badly for the kind of correction that we're in right now... It's easy to find gloom and doom, but consumers are hanging in there, their spending rates are still quite good... The contraction occurred ... in the investment sector, where we had an overexpansion."
Paul O'Neill - Treasury Secretary, on ABC's "This Week.", Sunday June 24, 2001.
"Despite the current slowdown, however, intermediate and longer-term prospects for the U.S. economy are still very bright"
Alfred Broaddus - President of Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, in a speech to the Virginia Housing Coalition, June 14, 2001.
Just like old times.
"I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress."
Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929.
JPM Derivatives Monster Crashes
"There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity."
Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co. - January 12, 1928.
"I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool's paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future."
E. H. H. Simmons, President, New York Stock Exchange - January 12, 1928.
"This crash is not going to have much effect on business."
Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago, October 24, 1929.
"There will be no repetition of the break of yesterday... I have no fear of another comparable decline."
Arthur W. Loasby (President of the Equitable Trust Company), quoted in NYT, Friday, October 25, 1929.
"We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices."
Goodbody and Company - Market-letter quoted in The New York Times, Friday, October 25, 1929.
"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel that there will soon, if ever, be a fifty or sixty point break below present levels, such as Mr. Babson has predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher than it is today within a few months."
Irving Fisher, The Most Prestigious Economist of His Day. - October 16, 1929.
"I believe the breaks of the last few days have driven stocks down to hard rock. I believe that we will have a ragged market for a few weeks and then the beginning of a mild bull movement that will gain momentum next year."
Irving Fisher, The Most Prestigious Economist of His Day. - October 22, 1929. (October 22, 1929
"Probably the question most frequently heard around Wall Street is ‘How high can stocks go?’ To the unsophisticated observer there appears to be no maximum price."
New York Times, August 21, 1929.
"This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan... that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years."
R. W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929.
"Buying of sound, seasoned issues now will not be regretted"
E. A. Pearce - Market letter quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929.
"Some pretty intelligent people are now buying stocks... Unless we are to have a panic -- which no one seriously believes, stocks have hit bottom."
R. W. McNeal, financial analyst in October 1929.
"The decline is in paper values, not in tangible goods and services...America is now in the eighth year of prosperity as commercially defined. The former great periods of prosperity in America averaged eleven years. On this basis we now have three more years to go before the tailspin."
Stuart Chase (American economist and author), NY Herald Tribune, November 1, 1929.
"Hysteria has now disappeared from Wall Street."
The Times of London, November 2, 1929.
"The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression... For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game... Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before."
Business Week, November 2, 1929.
"...despite its severity, we believe that the slump in stock prices will prove an intermediate movement and not the precursor of a business depression such as would entail prolonged further liquidation..."
Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 2, 1929.
"... a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall."
Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 10, 1929.
"The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most."
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, November 14, 1929.
"In most of the cities and towns of this country, this Wall Street panic will have no effect."
Paul Block (President of the Block newspaper chain), editorial, November 15, 1929.
"Financial storm definitely passed."
Bernard Baruch, cablegram to Winston Churchill, November 15, 1929.
"I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress."
Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929.
"I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence."
Herbert Hoover, December 1929
"1930 will be a splendid employment year."
U.S. Dept. of Labor, New Year's Forecast, December 1929.
"For the immediate future, at least, the outlook (stocks) is bright."
Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in Economics, in early 1930.
"...there are indications that the severest phase of the recession is over..."
Harvard Economic Society (HES) Jan 18, 1930.
"There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about."
Andrew W. Mellon - Secretary of the Treasury, Feb 1930.
"The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity."
Julius Barnes, head of Hoover's National Business Survey Conference, Mar 16, 1930.
"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst -- and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us."
Herbert Hoover, President of the United States, May 1, 1930.
"...by May or June the spring recovery forecast in our letters of last December and November should clearly be apparent..."
Harvard Economic Society (HES) - May 17, 1930.
"Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over."
Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930.
"... irregular and conflicting movements of business should soon give way to a sustained recovery..."
Harvard Economic Society (HES) June 28, 1930.
"... the present depression has about spent its force..."
Harvard Economic Society (HES), Aug 30, 1930.
"We are now near the end of the declining phase of the depression."
Harvard Economic Society (HES) Nov 15, 1930.
"All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S."
President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933. expiring currency.
"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23.
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816. FE 10:69.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
Thomas Jefferson - 1809, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill.
"Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs."
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61.
"Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself."
Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788. ME 7:36.
"It is a cruel thought, that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not."
Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, 1779. ME 4:298, Papers 2:298.
"The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make of our country one of the happiest on earth."
Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1787. ME 6:192.
"Every discouragement should be thrown in the way of men who undertake to trade without capital."
Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Tracy, 1785. Papers 8:399.
"The system of banking [I] have... ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens."
Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:18
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
Thomas Jefferson - Autobiography, 1821.