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“... The Government’s financial policy in Britain during most of the post-war period has been based on ‘demand management’: the attempt to maintain total spending on a smooth upward trend, thereby preserving a high and stable level of employment. This basis for policy, correctly called Keynesian, has recently been displaced by the adoption of targets for money and other financial variables on the basis of a doctrine, monetarism, of which the central contention is that employment cannot in the long run be influenced much by financial policy, and that attempts to change the level of employment from what is dictated by market forces will only cause inflation ...”

“... The implications​ for Britain of EEC membership are rapidly becoming so perversely disadvantageous that either a major change in existing arrangements must be made or we shall have, somehow, to withdraw. I strongly support the idea of Britain’s membership of the Common Market for political and cultural reasons. I would also support co-ordinated economic policies which were mutually advantageous to all the member countries ...”

“... I am in favour of Britain having much closer ties with other European countries, provided that appropriate institutions are created and the whole thing is brought under effective political control. But I have never been able to understand what it is that those who support the Maastricht Treaty think they are going to get out of it. Maastricht supporters are keen on ‘not being left out ...”

“... A lot of people throughout Europe have suddenly realised that they know hardly anything about the Maastricht Treaty while rightly sensing that it could make a huge difference to their lives. Their legitimate anxiety has provoked Jacques Delors to make a statement to the effect that the views of ordinary people should in future be more sensitively consulted ...”

“... I have heard people say that the Budget was a bore. This may be true for those who had to listen to it or for those who are interested in minutiae. But as one interested primarily in economic strategy, I cannot remember a more intriguing situation. How can it possibly be right to propose a huge tax increase for next year, and an even larger one for the year after that, when by general consent unemployment is going to be in the region of three million and rising? I am going to argue that this Budget only makes sense on very special assumptions about the performance of the economy; and that if, a year from now, the situation is broadly unchanged – if, that is, output has not changed much, with unemployment still around three million and the balance of payments not in serious deficit – it will be every bit as wrong to raise taxes then as it would now ...”

“... This book brings together the ‘most important academic papers and journalism’ of Professor Tim Congdon, described in the blurb as ‘one of the City’s most well-known commentators’. Congdon’s provocative thesis is that ‘monetarism’, as adopted by British governments between 1976 and 1985, was a decisive success, but that the gains were lost when Nigel Lawson let things rip, causing a boom that had to go bust ...”

“... The United States is widely believed to have acquired a New Economy, having achieved the longest economic expansion in its history and the lowest unemployment rate for thirty years. Untold wealth has been created, productivity growth has accelerated and inflation has been dormant. It is generally agreed that the growth of the US economy must soon slow down – or be slowed down by Chairman Alan Greenspan – because unemployment cannot fall much further without inflation waking up ...”

“... This is the story of a disastrous encounter with psychoanalysis which severely blemished my middle years.I was about thirty years old when I found myself to be in a state of terrible distress. It was the paralysis of my will, rather than the pain itself, which enabled me to infer, using my head, that I needed help different in kind from the support of friends ...”

“... his sympathetic and intelligent attention to everything in writing that resists them. As it does. Wynne Godley, who died in May, wrote this piece in 1999 for a ‘Liber Amicorum’ celebrating Kermode’s 80th birthday: To begin with the mean score was about 9-4 in my favour and I always won. Frank held my racquet in his hand admiringly and ...”

“... of their members. The option was only put to their members when there was a very strong case. The Godley Papers consists of articles by Wynne Godley which have appeared in the Observer and New Statesman during the last four years and which fight a passionate rearguard action against the revival of pre-Keynesian ...”

“... Godley and Cripps devote their first seven seven pages to acknowledging the storms that are raging around the subject of macroeconomics. Deteriorating economic performances, and monetarists, ‘converted’ governments ‘to the idea that it was impossible for them to control output and unemployment. All they could do, the new story went, was create conditions (including the elimination of inflation) in which enterprise could flourish ...”

“... I paid the mason his 70 quid, then set off back to London. Years later, on a trip to Ireland with Wynne Godley, I asked him to accompany me to the cemetery to pay my respects. Mount Pleasant is a maze and, while I thought I could remember where the grave was, I couldn’t. Wynne – an exemplary companion – and I ...”

“... Hayek’s scenario could well reverse out into its opposite – let us say, the prospect drawn by Wynne Godley in these pages. As the Treaty neared ratification, he observed (LRB, 8 October 1992): The incredible lacuna in the Maastricht programme is that while it contains a blueprint for the establishment and modus operandi of an independent central ...”

“... very close to Klein, and his wife was a patient of hers. Readers of this journal may recall Wynne Godley’s complaint that his analyst, Masud Khan, was himself a patient and confidant of Winnicott – Robert Rodman even conjectures a homosexual attraction – all the time he was treating Godley in such ...”