Alan Blinder Quotes

• Life is not a multiple choice test, it's an open-book essay exam.

  Alan Blinder

  Book, Teaching, Multiple Choice

  47 Copy quote

• The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.

  Alan Blinder

  Bankers, Investing, Lasts

  11 Copy quote

• 'Murphys law of economic policy': Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.

  Alan Blinder

  Law, Influence, Economics

  "New ball game, same old team" by Faisal Islam, www.theguardian.com. March 6, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

• If you try to give an on-the-one-hand-or-the-other- hand answer, only one of the hands tends to get quoted.

  Alan Blinder

  Hands, Giving, Trying

  4 Copy quote

• In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters. And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production.

  Alan Blinder

  Cutting, Would Be, Inventory

  4 Copy quote

• Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

  Alan Blinder

  Democracy, Public Opinion, Input

  4 Copy quote

• There is a kind of a cascading chain, ... If one can't sell, then that business doesn't buy and that means the next business doesn't sell, and the previous business doesn't sell, and so on.

  Alan Blinder

  Mean, Next, Kind

  4 Copy quote

• And the maestro surely wielded the chairman's baton with extraordinary skill. His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both.

  Alan Blinder

  Skills, Age, Lucky

  6 Copy quote

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