Hyman Minsky

"Economic institutions evolve and change over time."

"The future is made by present decisions and actions."

"Financial markets are driven by both rationality and emotion."

"The key insight is that capitalism is inherently unstable. The more successful it is, the more unstable it becomes."

"Financial markets are dominated by herding behavior. When everyone thinks alike, that's when the market is most fragile."

"Stability is destabilizing. Success breeds the seeds of future failure in financial systems."

"The financial system we have is the result of the way we regulate it. Different regulations produce different instabilities."

"Wall Street views are not necessarily right. They represent the conventional wisdom, which is often wrong."

"To understand the modern economy, you must understand how debt and leverage work in the system."

"The essence of capitalism is cyclical. Booms inevitably lead to busts when expectations are not met."

"Laissez-faire is a world that was never really tried, but it would work only if we had honest bankers and prudent businessmen."

"The visible hand of management has displaced the invisible hand of the market in determining outcomes."

"Money is not neutral. It matters how much money is created and how it gets into the economy."

"Financial innovation tends to increase systemic fragility rather than improve economic efficiency."

"Banks are not intermediaries. They are entrepreneurs who create purchasing power through lending."

"The beauty of modern capitalist finance is that it allows people to be optimistic about tomorrow while being pessimistic about today."

"Asset price inflation is the mechanism by which expansions are validated and become self-fulfilling."

"If you want to understand the economy, study how money actually flows through it, not how textbooks say it should."

"Economists have been trained to ignore the most important aspects of how capitalist economies actually function."

"The business cycle is not an accident. It emerges from the structure of our financial system."

"When debt levels are high, the economy becomes fragile and vulnerable to any negative shock."

"Central banks cannot prevent crises. They can only delay them or manage their aftermath."

"The complexity of modern finance makes it harder, not easier, for regulators to maintain stability."

"Investment depends on expectations about the future, and those expectations are inherently uncertain."

"The more leveraged the system becomes, the more sensitive it is to changes in sentiment."

"Conventional economics assumes rationality that doesn't exist in real financial markets."

"A capitalist economy is inherently uncertain. We cannot know the future, so financial markets are always speculative."

"The period of great stability is when the seeds of future instability are being sown."

"Government deficit spending can be stabilizing, contrary to what most economists believe."

"We need to understand that capitalism without financial regulation is like a human body without an immune system."