Charles P. Kindleberger

“Charlie Kindleberger was a delightful colleague: perceptive, responsive, curious about everything, full of character, and, above all, lively. Those same qualities are everywhere evident in Manias, Panics, and Crashes.”

“My old teacher Charles Kindleberger used to say, “Anyone who spends too much time thinking about international money goes mad” — by which he meant that you start to believe subjects like the world’s choice of reserve currency aren’t just interesting and glamorous, but are what drives everything. They don’t.”

“A follow-the-leader process develops as firms and households see that others are profiting from speculative purchases. ‘There is nothing as disturbing to one’s well-being and judgment as to see a friend get rich.’ Unless it is to see a nonfriend get rich.”

“We were conscious of a great sense of excitement about the plan. Marshall himself was a great, great man — funny, odd but great — Olympian in his moral quality. We'd stay up all night, night after night. The first work ever done that I know about in economics on computers used the Pentagon's computers at night for the Marshall Plan. I had a tremendous sense of gratification from working so hard on it.”