Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | yesterday
‘ Migeru ’(?), 10 October, writing in European Tribune ( HERE ) quotes from Wealth Of Nations , without explanation of the context, a piece called ‘ Adam Smith on Banking’ and risks giving a wrong impression of exactly what Adam Smith was discussing. “ In The Wealth of Nations, when discussing Banking reform in Scotland in the latter part of the 18th century, Adam...
European Tribune (Free subscription) | yesterday
In The Wealth of Nations, when discussing Banking reform in Scotland in the latter part of the 18th century, Adam Smith had the following to sayTo restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker for any sum, whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them; or, to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when...
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | 07/10/2008
Adam Smith’s works are often quoted from but seldom read. This promotes both a reckless circulation of well-known quotations of sentences and paragraphs which are misleading and sometimes exactly opposite to the meanings that Adam Smith intended and the corruption of the actual passages, sometimes run together with other sentences from markedly different parts of his books...
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | 06/10/2008
Daniel Bulone contributes an interesting piece on Adam Smith’s Tunnel Vision (‘observations on exchange’) HERE : He discusses the relatedness of ideas in Smith’s Moral Sentiments with Matt Ridley’s ideas in The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (1996). He writes: “ Though what he [Smith] is saying is technically true, Smith's points...
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | 06/10/2008
... of the world to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” That was not Karl Marx but Adam Smith, in his classic 1776 treatise on capitalism, the Wealth of Nations. Little has changed since then .” Comment Susan George’s first sentence above sounds innocent, but when you think of all the people not at her lecture who have claims to being ‘concerned, engaged, decent’ and...
www.OSIR.org.in (Free subscription) | 07/10/2008
The 38 th annual Earth Day comes after an extraordinary year of environmental news. Polar bears seem on the verge of being declared an endangered species . In October, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a panel of climate scientists . And, as of Source: www.slate.com Surprise, MTV s Environmental News [...]
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | 04/10/2008
David Sogge , 3 October, writes in Casino Crash : ‘ Adam Smith responds to Bank Bailout! ’ ( HERE ) “ Many know the Adam Smith remark (1776): “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…” But Smith wrote other things that Wall Street types would choke on, including some...
Circle of 13 (Free subscription) | 04/10/2008
From: Casino Crash David Sogge writes : Many know the Adam Smith remark (1776): "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…" But Smith wrote other things that Wall Street types would choke on, including some remarks pertinent to the bailout plan railroaded at high speed through...
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | 05/10/2008
In what is otherwise a fairly sound analysis of the current crisis, Marc Chandler in Seeking Alpha ( HERE ) asks: ‘ What happened to Free Markets'’ , in the course of which, unfortunately, he makes these remarkable assertions: “ The whole notion of an economy as a separate sphere of activity is nonsensical. The patron saints of the church of laissez faire, Adam Smith and David Ricardo,...
Blood & Treasure (Free subscription) | 03/10/2008
Fareed Zakaria interviews Wen Jiabao. The usual diplo-guff: It’s the sidebars that are interesting. Apparently, the Communist Party of China is holding high the banner of Adam Smith thought, advancing particularly under the guidance of the Theory of Moral Sentiments,...
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | 5 hours ago
A book review ‘ Learning From The Prisoners ’ in Forbes.com by David Henderson 10 October, includes this passage: “ The authors err badly, though, in writing that the prisoners' dilemma shows Adam Smith's mistake in claiming that each firm pursuing its self-interest leads to an outcome that is best for them all. Adam Smith never said that. Smith's focus was on what's...
Arto Bendiken (Free subscription) | 09/10/2008
I feel like we're inside a Civilization game and there's some f*cking idiot playing. — Michael T. McNamara I'm reading a timely book, Paper Money , by George J. W. Goodman . Writing under the unlikely pseudonym of "Adam Smith", Goodman is also the author of the classic investment bestsellers The Money Game and Supermoney . Published in 1981, Paper Money is currently out of print, though...
GuruFocus Updates (Free subscription) | 09/10/2008
Everybody knows that Warren Buffett gets his investment information largely from annual reports. Today, companies call him; but, fifty years ago, Buffett was not the go-to guy if you wanted to sell your company or raise capital for your failing bank. In an interview with Warren Buffett, Adam Smith, author of Supermoney , asked how "regular" investors can find good investment ideas. Warren...
Shades of Grey (Free subscription) | 06/10/2008
I saw this over at the Adam Smith Institute Blog. Out of curiousity I typed in the blog URL and was rather bemused to see it hiding the word Bradford. Check yourself…
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Free subscription) | 05/10/2008
J. R. Nyquist writes (3 october) in Geopolitical HERE : ‘ Political Blame and the Myth of Government-Sponsored Salvation’ “ According to Adam Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand,” financial selfishness (a.k.a. greed) is a positive force in a free economy. In one of the most celebrated passages in Smith’s book, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations, we...
