Michael Pettis

“well-functioning market requires all three types of investors for socially beneficial projects to have access to cheap capital. Value investors allocate capital to its most productive use. Speculators, because they trade frequently, provide the liquidity and trading volume that allows value investors and relative value traders to execute their trades cheaply. They also ensure that information is disseminated quickly.”
― Michael Pettis, Avoiding the Fall: China's Economic Restructuring

“Unfortunately, predictions of this sort are notoriously unreliable, and economists seem to be especially bad at predicting turning points. Karl Marx once noted that when the train of history hits a curve, intellectuals tend to fall off the train. Intellectual inertia keeps them moving in the same direction, even though the train is no longer going there. Earlier predictions, Marx suggests, are pretty useless in a debate about whether we are at a turning point.”
― Michael Pettis, Avoiding the Fall: China's Economic Restructuring