Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Notes

¹Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan, “The Mortgage Market and Consumer Debt,” at America's Community Bankers Annual Convention, Washington, DC, October 19, 2004, www.federalreserve.gov/boardDocs/Speeches/2004/20041019.

²The top five Wall Street firms gave away $36 billion in bonuses in 2006, up by 30 percent, while Goldman Sachs provided its employees with average bonuses of about $400,000. In London, one employee got a bonus of almost $100 million. Guy Adams and Sarah Harris, “The Super Rich: Britain's Billionaires,” Independent, December 17, 2006. Roger Jenkins is referenced in Helen Dunne, “The P40m Banker,” Business, January 17, 2007.

³Andrew Bary, “Rich Man, Poor Man,” Barron's, February 2007. See also Jeanne Sahadi, “Wealth Gap Widens,” CNN Money, August 29, 2006.

⁴Alan Greenspan, “Gold and Economic Freedom,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand, ed. (New York: Signet, 1967), 96–101 (reprinted from The Objectivist, 1966).

⁵Ibid.

⁶Flow of Funds Accounts of the U.S., Federal Reserve Board, http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/Z1/current/data.htm.

⁷Bill Bonner, “Eat, Drink and Buy Merrily,” American Conservative, February 13, 2006. See also Arnaud de Borchgrave, “Our Disappearing Dollar,” Pittsburgh Tribune‐Review, December 18, 2004, and Michael Hodges, “Grandfather Economic Report,” December 2006.