Hyman Minsky Quotes

The missing step in the standard Keynesian theory [is] the explicit consideration of capitalist finance within a cyclical and speculative context . . . finance sets the pace for the economy. As recovery approaches full employment . . . soothsayers will proclaim that the business cycle has been banished [and] debts can be taken on . . . But in truth neither the boom, nor the debt deflation… and certainly not a recovery can go on forever. Each state nurtures forces that lead to its own destruction. So

A capitalist economy cannot be maintained, however, if it oscillates between threats of an imminent collapse of asset values and employment and threats of accelerating inflation and rampant speculation, especially if the threats are sometimes realized. If the market mechanism is to function well, we must arrange to constrain the uncertainty due to business cycles so that the expectations that guide investment can reflect a vision of tranquil progress.

The party will go on until reckless speculation becomes unsustainable, ending with the inevitable collapse in bullish sentiment, a phenomenon called a Minsky moment, named for economist Hyman Minsky. It’s what happens when market watchers suddenly begin to wake up and worry about irrational exuberance. Once their sentiment changes, a crash is inevitable as an asset and credit bubble and boom goes into a bust.

That’s true, and it’s a serious problem. If you wanted to understand the roots of the financial crisis, you would have done better studying the Financial Instability Hypothesis of Hyman Minsky, a post-Keynesian, or the business-cycle theory of Knut Wicksell, one of the founders of the Stockholm school, than the standard neoclassical textbooks.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the riches of nations can be measured by the violence of the crises which they experience,’ opined the nineteenth-century French economist Clément Juglar.13 Once creative destruction is taken into account, Juglar’s observation doesn’t appear so puzzling. Some economists take a ‘pit-stop’ view of recessions, seeing them as periods when efficiency measures are most likely to be undertaken.14 Business failures, which soar during economic downturns, are seen as essential to the economy’s evolution over time. As the saying attributed to the former astronaut and airline boss Frank Borman goes, ‘capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.’ If that is the case, then monetary policy should not interrupt a recession’s cleansing effect.fn4 Put another way, if financial stability is destabilizing (as Hyman Minsky maintained), too much economic stability induces sclerosis.

The ultimate owner of economies were citizens and their governments not banks and companies.