quote of the day

Willem Buiter has a very useful and provocative blog at the Financial Times website called Mavercon.  The Dutch-born former Bank of England MPC member is not afraid to take policy makers to task or call a spade a spade. In his latest post…

This is a quote from the populist American politician William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat famous at the beginning of the last century."There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the…

As with everything else, the bailout of the U.S. banking system is going to have unintended consequences. One of them seems to be giving exactly those firms that wasted billions of shareholder money a chance to double down. Flush with…

Reflecting on the market turmoil today, Marshall Auerback had a funny if ironic thought: Our beloved Treasury Secretary promised us Financial Armageddon if we didn't pass his wretched bill a few weeks ago. I wonder how he would describe…

I love Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's CEO. He really tells it like it is. At last quarter's earnings call, he called a spade a spade and said "prime looks terrible" in reference to prime mortgage loans. This quarter his quote is even…

Talking about how he will fare against Barack Obama in the upcoming third and last U.S. Presidential Debate, John McCain said:"We're going to spend a lot of time and after I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going…

Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan have been the worst monetary stewards in U.S. Federal Reserve history. A former Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr. once said it was the Fed's job "to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets…

Jeremy Grantham has seen this crash coming for quite some time. Nevertheless, he is not selling everything and waiting out the market in Kruggerrands and cash. has kept a good long-term perspective about investing that bears repeating here.…

With blood on the street and one flagging financial institution after another gasping for dear life, a quote from the Movie "Wall Street" bears remembering: In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million…

Today, David Wighton over at the Times Online referenced U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's quip that the U.S. Government had a bazooka ready to us in the case of the Frannie and Freddie Nightmare on Wall Street in saying:Helping to…