I’ve been noticing a quote, attributed to Keynes, that neatly encapsulates an argument I’ve been putting for some years.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

The point of this is that, even if you can see a market bubble (or irrational slump) developing, you should not bet that prices will return to normal, for example by selling stocks short. The most sensible course is simply to avoid holding assets that are overpriced (I’ll need to work through the details of this argument formally some time – I guess it’s done in the literature on rational bubbles). Anyway, although the quote is being widely reproduced, I haven’t been able to find an actual citation, and the informal use of “you” leads me to suspect that these are not Keynes’ actual words. If anyone can find the source, I’d be very grateful.

On the same front, I gratefully acknowledge reader Bernhard Walpen, who sent me the full text of the Hayek quote on Pinochet that I mentioned some time ago. Here it is (with emphasis added by me):

Hayek, Friedrich August von, 1981: “En el Momento Actual Nuestra Principal Tarea es Limitar el Poder del Gobierno” [Interview], in: El Mercurio, April 4, 1981, p. D8-D9.

D9: “Bueno, yo le dirla que, como una institución a largo plazo, estoy totalmente en contra de las dictaturas. Pero bien puede ser un sistema necesario en un periodo de transición. A veces es necesario que en un país haya, durante un tiempo, alguna forma de poder dictatorial. Como usted comprenderá, es posible que un dictador gobierne de manera liberal. Y también es posible que una democracia gobierne con una total falta de liberalismo. Y yo, personalmente, prefiero a un dictador liberal y no a un Gobierno democrático carente de liberalismo. Mi impresión particular es – y esto es válido para Sudamérica – que en Chile, por ejemplo, habrá una transición entre un Gobierno dictatorial y un Gobierno liberal. Y en esa transición puede ser necesario mantener algunos poderes dictatoriales, no como algo permanente, sino como un arreglo de transición.”

My Spanish isn’t great, but it’s clear on the one hand that Hayek is endorsing the Pinochet regime [Bernhard’s extensive research on Hayek revealed no statement critical of Pinochet], and on the other hand, that he viewed it as a transitional stage in a movement towards a nondictatorial liberal government.

The most natural reading of the phrase I’ve emphasised is that, even without the prospect of transition, Hayek thinks a liberal (that is, free-market) dictatorship is to be preferred to an illiberal democracy. But as with Marxists and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, the tendency is to use the prospect of ultimate transition to an ideal state to avoid a clear commitment for or against a dictatorship of indefinite duration. And, since the Pinochet regime did ultimately give way to a democratic government, it’s probably not sensible to draw firm conclusions on the basis of Hayek’s attitudes in this case.

Update In the comments thread, reader Alan from Southerly Buster provides a good translation. And Brad de Long notes that he has been unable to find a source for the Keynes quote which looks ‘too good to be true’. I agree – it seems like a response to arguments that Keynes would never have encountered, regarding the potential for rational speculators to stabilise markets.