Quote of the Day

[FRED]

Temporary depository until the new site comes online.

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."

- George Bernard Shaw

[bart]

"By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft."

-- John Maynard Keynes in his book "THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE" (1920). (this is in the context of speaking about the ability to control money supply)

[jk]

"Derivatives markets guarantee a winner for every loser, but they will over time concentrate the losses in vulnerable sectors. Nature obeys Mayer's Third Law, which holds that risk-shifting instruments will tend to shift risks onto those less able to bear them, because them as got want to keep and hedge while them as ain't got want to get and speculate. "

martin mayer

[bart]

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

-- George Bernard Shaw

[Uncle Jack]

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

[Sapiens]

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. "
-Vladimir Lenin

[Jim Nickerson]

"...one thing we do know about the stock market is that when everyone is gazing skyward, it's never a bad idea to take a quick peek down."

Alan Abelson

[Lukester]

Wisdom's dilemma: "too little knowledge" vs. "too much knowledge"


CONSEQUENCES OF PERPETUAL INNOCENCE - BAD

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”
--James Baldwin Biography - Fiction Writer, Essayist, Social Critic, 1924-1987

CONSEQUENCES OF PERPETUAL INNOCENCE - GOOD

“All you need in life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is assured.”
--Mark Twain - Fiction Writer, Essayist, Social Critic, 1835-1910

[Tet]

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. -Mark Twain

When it comes to stocks and bonds it's best to be uninformed.

[Sapiens]

.
"Those that claim that there is no conspiracy fail to understand history; they fail to understand economics, and in doing so they fail in their understanding of mathematics. They fail to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse in seeking the truth, or even the moral obligation to seek the truth, and then to adhere to it once it is known."

-John Kutyn, 1999


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[Sapiens]

.
" I set to work to read the Act of Parliament by which the Bank of England was created in 1694. The inventors knew well what they were about. Their design was to mortgage by degrees the whole of the country, all the lands, all the houses, and all other property, and even all labor, to those who would lend their money to the State—the scheme, the crafty, the cunning, the deep scheme has produced what the world never saw before—starvation in the midst of plenty." -- Wn. Cobbett
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[trex]

"Economics is the science that makes astrology look good."

- Investech Research, Market Analyst, June 2007

[bart]

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
-- P.J. O'Rourke


"From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time."
-- Friedrich Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom"

[GRG55]

"Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. Never put anything in an email."
Eliot Spitzer - Former New York State Attorney General

[GRG55]

The mission is "economic altruism"...trying to help people. When they desperately want to buy things, be happy to sell, and when they want to sell, buy. :p
--Sir John Templeton--