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Coolidge was a federalist. You go back and read him and it's almost intimidating to write about him because he writes better himself than anyone. He's one of the best writers as presidents go.

Amity Shlaes

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Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
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Back
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Coolidge
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Write
Intimidating

More quotes by Amity Shlaes

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Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.
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To investors, job creation is a second-order effect. Market participants care first about interest rates, exchange rates, bond prices and the one great factor that affects all three: the long-term solvency of a bond company called the U.S. government.
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Coolidge really hated government being in the power business. He thought it was wrong. He saw the potential for growth in the power business. He didn't want the federal government in it.
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Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with.
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Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.
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The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.
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The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job depression is when I lose mine.
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I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.
Amity Shlaes
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With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.
Amity Shlaes
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Right now we're concerned about budget. Right now we're concerned about the prospect of interest rate rise. We're concerned about government corruption, government handing out deals to specific groups. Coolidge fixed a problem like that. He came into a rough time and he, and Harding before him, fixed that by budgeting.
Amity Shlaes
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The donning of the ear buds marks the beginning of teen life, when children set off on their own for the passage through adolescence.
Amity Shlaes
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The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.
Amity Shlaes
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Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge and his treasury secretary Mellon loved new technology. Like JFK, C.C. divined that a new technology could lift the nation out of its doldrums the only difference was that JFK's new technology was space travel, and Coolidge's travel by airplane.
Amity Shlaes
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Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.
Amity Shlaes
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We're in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don't believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.
Amity Shlaes
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Today many politicians suggest that where the federal government does not act, there must be anarchy. That view is odd, blinkering out the work of state and towns, which until recently did much of our charitable and cultural work. That view also blinkers out the role of mutual societies and churches.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.
Amity Shlaes
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Europe unified its monetary policy through the euro before it unified politically, therefore sustaining member countries' abilities to pursue the kind of independent fiscal policies that can strain a joint currency.
Amity Shlaes
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I think the Bushes would have liked President Coolidge, though I often wonder what nickname 43 would pick for 30. President Bush has great respect for his father, and so did President Coolidge, whose father was also in government, albeit in a smaller way.
Amity Shlaes