Category: Quotes

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Is my life wasted?

Question:I am turning 27, and feel I have wasted a lot of time. Is it too late?

Answer: Too late for what?

If you slept through your 26th birthday, it’s too late for you to experience it. It’s too late for you to watch “LOST” in its premiere broadcast. (Though, honestly, you didn’t miss much.) It’s too late for you to fight in the Vietnam War. It’s too late for you to go through puberty or attend nursery school. It’s too late for you to learn a second language as proficiently as a native speaker. It’s probably too late for you to be breastfed.

It’s not too late for you to fall in love.

It’s not too late for you to have kids.

It’s not too late for you to embark on an exciting career or series of careers.

It’s not too late for you to read the complete works of Shakespeare; learn how to program computers; learn to dance; travel around the world; go to therapy; become an accomplished cook; sky dive; develop an appreciation for jazz; write a novel; get an advanced degree; save for your old age; read “In Search of Lost Time”; become a Christian, then an atheist, then a Scientologist; break a few bones; learn how to fix a toilet; develop a six-pack …

Honestly, I’m 47, and I’ll say this to you, whippersnapper: you’re a fucking kid, so get over yourself. I’m a fucking kid, too. I’m almost twice your age, and I’m just getting started! My dad is in his 80s, and he wrote two books last year.

You don’t get to use age as an excuse. Get off your ass!

Also, learn about what economists call “sunk costs.” If I give someone $100 on Monday, and he spends $50 on candy, he’ll probably regret that purchase on Tuesday. In a way, he’ll still think of himself as a guy with $100 — half of which is wasted.

What he really is is a guy with $50, just as he would be if I’d handed him a fifty-dollar bill. A sunk cost from yesterday should not be part of today’s equation. What he should be thinking is this: “What should I do with my $50?”

What you are isn’t a person who has wasted 27 years. You are a person who has X number of years ahead of you. What are you going to do with them?

-from Quora

 

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Music Quotes

The beat goes on

When the Fed now writes $85 billion of checks to buy Treasuries and mortgages every month, they really have nothing in the “bank” to back them. Supposedly they own a few billion dollars of “gold certificates” that represent a fairy-tale claim on Ft. Knox’s secret stash, but there’s essentially nothing there but trust. When a primary dealer such as J.P. Morgan or Bank of America sells its Treasuries to the Fed, it gets a “credit” in its account with the Fed, known as “reserves.” It can spend those reserves for something else, but then another bank gets a credit for its reserves and so on and so on. The Fed has told its member banks “Trust me, we will always honor your reserves,” and so the banks do, and corporations and ordinary citizens trust the banks, and “the beat goes on,” as Sonny and Cher sang. $54 trillion of credit in the U.S. financial system based upon trusting a central bank with nothing in the vault to back it up. Amazing!-from Bill Gross

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Anecdotes Quotes

Have you been talking to my wife?

Eric Rosenfeld was one of the founders/Principals of the famous hedge fund LTCM

LTCM started in 1994 with around a Billion $ in assets.It had a spectacularly good run for a couple of years before blowing up in 1998.

Like other founders, Eric kept reinvesting in the fund only to see his fortune disappear as the fund blew up.

Many years later, he gave a mind blowing seminar to MIT students narrating his experiences.

One of the students asked him “Did you put everything into LTCM?”

He replied back “Have you been talking to my wife?”

 

 

 

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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”