Quotes 1

The thing that most affects the stock market is everything. - James Palysted Wood

I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth. - Warren Buffett

You must never confuse genius with a bull market. - Nick Leslau

Financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. - John K. Galbraith

People who look for easy money invariably pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this sordid earth. - Edwin Lefevre

All nations with a capitalist mode of production are seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the mediation of the process of production. - Karl Marx

Long periods of prosperity usually end in scandal. - George Taucher

There is something about inside information which seems to paralyse a man's reasoning powers. - Bernard Baruch

People forget that today's junk is often tomorrow's blue chip. - Mike Milken

When you see business execs helicoptering to the golf course, waiters discussing the merits of Intel versus Applied Materials, 22-year-olds in suspenders smoking cigars and drinking Martinis, and houses in the suburbs selling way over the asking price - then you know that the referee has brought the whistle to his lips and is about to blow. The game is nearly over. - James K. Glassman

I don't think of myself as a criminal. I was trying to correct a situation. And however naive and stupid this might sound, I was always working in the best interests of the bank. - Nick Leeson

There is perhaps no record of a bank fraud existent of which the perpetrator was not honest yesterday. - James S. Gibbons

Because we're independent, people come to us when they're in trouble. They come to auntie and auntie helps them. They find us wise, sympathetic and helpful - but not rich. - George Blunden

A bank lives on credit. Till it is trusted it is nothing; and when it ceases to be trusted it turns to nothing. - Walter Bagehot

If we close a bank every time we find an example or two of fraud we would have rather fewer banks. - Robin Leigh-Pemberton on the BCCI scandal

Americans are still reasonably parochial. They'd rather make a bad loan in Texas than a good loan in Brazil. - Walter Wriston

It's so expensive to be rich. - Susan Gutfreund

If you don't have some bad loans you are not in business. - Paul Volcker

One of the things investors have learned about emerging markets recently is that they are hard to emerge from in an emergency. - Robert Hormats reflecting on the economic crisis in Mexico in 1995

A billion dollars isn't what it used to be. - Nelson Bunker Hunt whose family incurred debts of $1,825 million after failing to corner the silver market in the 1980s

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell. - Frank Borman

We pay the debts of the last generation by issuing bonds payable by the next generation. - Lawrence J. Peter

A remarkably large part of any rescuer's time is taken up in coping with, some would say, fighting off, the very same banks whose money the rescuer is trying to recover. - Lewis Robertson

It is unanimously and without qualification assumed that when anyone gets into debt, the fault is entirely and always that of the lender and not the borrower. - Bernard Levin

Debt isn't good, debt isn't bad. To put it in the extreme, for some companies no debt is too much leverage. For others a debt of 100% can easily be absorbed. People assume the capital structure of a company is burned in stone. The capital structure, like the individual, is constantly changing. - Mike Milken

No country has ever been ruined on account of its debts. - Adolf Hitler

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. - Herbert Hoover

I've never been able to understand how the Democrats can run those $1,000-a-plate dinners at such a profit and run the government at such a loss. - Ronald Reagan

The era of extravagance and insanity has come to an end. This is a breath of fresh air. Drexel got what it deserved. These guys could destroy the country. There was no rhyme or reason for what was going on. - Pierre Rinfret on the demise of Drexel Burnham Lambert

Money is lacking? Well then, create it! - Goethe