Political Quotes

“Three. I would not bring up Marshall if I expected to hold my audience very much longer than 3 minutes. Marshall took the example--to illustrate short-term supply, a fascinating thing--he took the example of fish. He said, what happens if there is a sudden change in the situation? Weather makes fish more or less available--a nice point--or if there is an increased demand for fish caused by the scarcity of meat during the year or two following a cattle plague. Mad cow disease in the late 19th century. A scarcity of fish caused by uncertainties of the weather has its exact parallel in our cold winter. These things come. I do not have to tell the Senator from Vermont about cold winters. Would outside intervention change the price of fish to the consumer in that circumstance, when there was a fixed supply? The answer from Alfred Marshall is emphatically ``no.'' Students of economics my age will remember this book. It is a very heavy book, but it is still around and it works. What it propounded is very clear. He said: To go over the ground in another way. Market values are governed by the relation of demand to stocks actually in the market. . . .''”