Streamline Training & Documentation: The Long Run

Friday, November 13, 2009

The Long Run

I often wish people would view distressing situations in the light of eternity, since today's hysteria is so often rather quickly forgotten.

John Maynard Keynes,
with his wife Lydia Lopokova
William Roberts, exhibited 1932
National Portrait Gallery, London
(Smithsonian Institution)
On the other hand, it is certainly a mistake to think that one should always simply sit and wait for grim circumstances to pass. John Maynard Keynes view on this point is famous . . .

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too uselss a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

— from A Tract on Monetary Reform, Ch. 3 (1924)

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Labels: Decision-making, Notables

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