Category: Quotes

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The big picture

Power is shifting from West to East. China has a population that is three times larger than that of the EU and an economy that will eventually be the world’s largest. India has more than a billion people. Indonesia’s population is three times that of the largest European country, and a host of countries – including Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Egypt – have more people today than any EU member state.

This is crucial, because, as technology and capital become globally mobile, a realignment of GDP and population will occur: the larger a country’s population, the bigger its economy. The United States remains extraordinarily strong, with its military easily the world’s largest and best equipped, but its status as the world’s only superpower will become untenable.

That is the big picture. The case for the EU today is that member countries, including Britain, need its heft in order to leverage power in economics, trade, defense, and foreign policy, as well as to address global challenges like climate change. The EU gives Britain a weight collectively that it lacks on its own.

It really is that simple. I admire the idealism of Europe’s early founders, but the rationale for Europe today has nothing to do with idealism. It is brutal Realpolitik. In a world in which China and India both have populations 20 times that of the United Kingdom, Britain needs the EU in order to pursue its national interest effectively. With it, we count for more; without it, we count for less.

–wrote Tony Blair

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Quotes

Why did Warren Buffett succeed?

 Yes, the halo is justified regarding his ability to create wealth. No one else has ever made so much money for investors through capital allocation. There is plenty of public information (and a lot of information in The Snowball that is new) that if considered thoughtfully shows that Buffett’s performance came from a combination of relentless drive, ruthless self-interest, boundless curiosity about a narrow subject, record-breaking parsimony, social climbing, complex financial maneuvers, occasional bullying, a keen understanding of the tax code, ceaseless study of financial and business arcana, the critical insight that running a hedge fund created low risk almost zero-cost leverage, the critical insight that insurance float created low risk zero-cost leverage, and the gradual accumulation of personal and institutional advantages from the repeated application of all of these things. I may have left a few things out, but this is the gist. Like most great performances, Buffett’s success is to be admired for its scale, audacity, creativity, and ambition — although not necessarily emulated in every respect.
-by Alice Schroeder, Author “The Snowball”

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Quotes

What is a real job?

In the old days, you went to work when the sun came up and you left to head home when the sun came down. Your wife packed your lunch and your relationship with your kids was a cursory grunting in their general direction on your nightly trek between the garage and whichever piece of living room furniture housed your liquor bottles. You did this for 25 years until “the workplace injury” and then you did it another 10. Then you were finished working and lived off the disability checks along with the fading hope that, at some point each week, the kids were going to call to say hi.

And then you fucking died and that was the end of it.

-Josh Brown in TRB

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Gold Quotes

Two Contradictory Thoughts on Gold

Two great contradictory thoughts on gold from Satyajit Das’s article in ET

 “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.”-JPMorgan’s words to Congress in 1912

 

“A 15th-century gold bug who’d stored all his wealth in bullion, bequeathed it to his children and required them to do the same would be more than a little miffed when gazing down from his celestial place of rest to see the real wealth of his lineage decline by nearly 90% over the next 500 years.”-Dylan Grice of Societe Generale

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Quotes

Rich Dad,Poor Dad and Bankrupt Dad

“Ricd Dad, Poor Dad” is one of the best sellers on Mumbai’s roads.The author Robert Kiyosaki was exposed as a fraud long time back by real estate veteran John Reed.Yet this did not stop some people from praising this dude as a genius.

Well, guess what, Robert Kiyosaki has now filed for business bankruptcy.

From Forbes:

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the bestselling Rich, Dad, Poor Dad series of financial advice books, is offering his fans yet another lesson in how the rich are different than you and me: they file for bankruptcy not because of ill health or unemployment related issues, but instead as a strategic business move.

Rich Global LLC, one of the corporate arms Kiyosaki has done business under, filed for bankruptcy protection in August, after it was ordered to pay just under $24 million to the Learning Annex and its chairman Bill Zanker.

Kiyosaki was one of the small-time mountebanks who made it to the big-time in the aughts by telling his forever falling behind audience that they could get ahead, they just had not learned how. The shtick behind the Rich Dad books was that Kiyosaki was sharing secret money-making strategies of the wealthy with his wage slave readers. The tips ran the gamut from ridiculous to illegal and downright hurtful and included advocating for insider trading,  arguing for the purchase of multiple real estate properties with little or no money down and telling followers they could purchase stocks on margin via unfunded brokerage accounts.

The Learning Annex was one of Kiyosaki’s earliest backers, and helped arrange a number of his most prominent speaking gigs in the early aughts. They were not alone. Oprah Winfrey had him on her show, and PBS ran his programming during their fundraising weeks.

So how did Kiyosaki, whom the website Celebrity Net Worth estimates is worth a cool $80 million, come to this pass?

Well, he didn’t come to any pass. He now conducts much of his business not via Rich Global LLC but under the rubrik Rich Dad Co. And it’s a corporate bankruptcy, not a personal bankruptcy. When the New York Post, which broke the story, tracked down Mike Sullivan, Rich Dad Co. CEO, he informed them that Kiyosaki would not be putting any of his personal fortune toward the settlement. As for Rich Global, Sulivan claimed it only had a few million in its coffers.

Of course, you could argue that Learning Annex CEO Zanker should have known better. No one has ever proven that Rich Dad, the man who supposedly gave Kiyosaki all his advice for wealthy living, ever existed. Nor has anyone ever documented any vast reserves of wealth earned by Kiyosaki prior to the publication of Rich Dad, Poor Dad in the 1997.