Finance Quotes - Page 12

• I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.

  Joseph O'Connor

  Business, Debt, Flamingos

  Joseph O'Connor (1994). “The secret world of the Irish male”

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• Give the Germans five deutschmarks and they will save it. But give the British £5 and they will borrow £25 and spend it.

  John Major

  Business, Giving, Debt

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• Should we really let our people starve so we can pay our debts.

  Julius Nyerere

  Business, People, Debt

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• We need to move beyond the demonisation of overpaid traders ... In finance and economics, ill-designed policy is a more powerful force for harm than individual greed or error.

  Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell

  Powerful, Business, Moving

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• In Las Vegas, people know that the odds are stacked against them. On Wall Street, they manipulate the odds while you are playing the game.

  John Ensign

  Wall, Business, Vegas

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• An elected government making huge changes with the consent of its people, is being undermined by concentrated powers in unregulated markets-powers which go beyond those of any individual government.

  George Papandreou

  Business, Government, People

  "Why We Must Unite Against The Unprincipled Speculators". www.businessinsider.com. March 8, 2010.

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• I've always been sceptical about the notion that the market is a person you can engage in an argument with, and that that person is an intelligent, rational, well-intentioned person: it is fantasy. We know that ... the market is subject to irrational optimism and pessimism, and is vindictive ... You're dealing with a crazy man ... Having got what he wants he will still kill you.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Business, Crazy, Intelligent

  "The Money Man: Super-economist Joseph Stiglitz on how to fix the recession". Interview with Sean O'Grady, www.independent.co.uk. February 9, 2010.

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• If we are really serious about preventing another crisis like the 2008 meltdown we should simply ban complex financial instruments, unless they can be unambiguously shown to benefit society in the long run. This is what we do all the time with other products-drugs, cars, electrical products and many others.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Running, Business, Long

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• It sounds to me like selling a car with faulty brakes, and then buying an insurance policy on those cars.

  Phil Angelides

  Business, Car, Sound

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• It's as if people used the invention of seat belts as an opportunity to take up drunk driving.

  John Lanchester

  Business, Opportunity, People

  John Lanchester (2010). “I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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• For as long as I can remember the slogan has been ... the federal government ought to behave more like families, because families balance their budgets. It turns out that families looked around and said, "You know what? Let's behave more like the government!"

  George Will

  Business, Government, Long

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• People can get information - on entertainment, politics, finance - much easier than before. That will change the way people do business, the way people live.

  Robin Li

  People, Entrepreneur, Information

  "The man behind China's answer to Google: accused by critics of piracy and censorship". Interview with Jonathan Watts, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2005.

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• But, if recent history has taught us anything, it’s that self-regulation doesn’t work in finance, and that worries about reputation are a weak deterrent to corporate malfeasance.

  James Surowiecki

  Taught Us, Self, Worry

  "Bankers Gone Wild" by James Surowiecki, www.newyorker.com. July 30, 2012.

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• But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

  Robert Waterman McChesney

  Political, Culture, Campaigns

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• I don't think there is a sound UK bank now, at least, if there is one I don't know about it. The City of London is finished, the financial centre of the world is moving east. All the money is in Asia. Why would it go back to the West? You don't need London.

  Jim Rogers

  Business, Moving, Thinking

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• Financial hydrogen bombs built on personal computers by 26-year-olds with MBAs.

  Felix Rohatyn

  Business, Years, Mba

  "They had parties, we got the hangover" by Ruth Sunderland, www.theguardian.com. June 6, 2009.

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• The arrangement bore the same relation to actual finance as fantasy football bears to the NFL.

  Michael Lewis

  Football, Business, Nfl

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• Wall Street got drunk and now it's got a hangover. And the question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do those fancy financial instruments?

  George W. Bush

  Business, Wall, Hangover

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• In an ideal world, one populated by vegetarians and Esperanto speakers, derivatives would be used for one thing only: reducing levels of risk. The list of individual traders who have lost more than a billion dollars at a time betting on derivatives is not short.

  John Lanchester

  Business, Risk, Lists

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• The City is, in terms of its basic functioning, a far-off country of which we know little.

  John Lanchester

  Country, Business, Cities

  John Lanchester (2010). “I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• In our view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction carrying dangers that, while latent, are potentially lethal.

  Warren Buffett

  Business, Mass Destruction, Views

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• The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen). Say you want to write a contract speculating on the number of twins to be born in Nebraska in 2020. No problem-at a price, you will easily find an obliging counterparty.

  Warren Buffett

  Business, Writing, Men

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.74, John Wiley & Sons

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• Discipline allows you to trade effectively. You can take your ego out of it. You can go wrong 60, 70% of the time and still make a lot of money. If you ignore the discipline of managing risk, you have to be right 80% of the time or more, and I don't know anyone who's that good.

  Larry Rosenberg

  Business, Discipline, Ego

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• There is time to go long, time to go short and time to go fishing.

  Jesse Lauriston Livermore

  Business, Fishing, Long

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• Amateurs look for challenges; professionals look for easy trades. Losers get high from the action; the pros look for the best odds.

  Alexander Elder

  Business, Odds, Challenges

  Alexander Elder (2002). “Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading”, p.12, John Wiley & Sons

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