Next, here’s a lesson I learned in a 12-step program and should have learned better: avoid contempt prior to investigation. When the financial stock meltdown started, I was on a television show with Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital, who warned that Merrill Lynch could be in very bad shape. I glibly said that I thought that its problems were limited and that the stock was a buy. Mr. Schiff was completely right and I was wrong. I had no idea that Mother Merrill, where I have been a happy stockholder for years, had been turned into a such a wild house of high-stakes gambling. I apologize to Mr. Schiff for my dismissal of his views, which turned out to be far superior to mine in this area. (I could do without his acolytes sending me endless hate mail, though.)
~ Ben Stein, "Lessons From the Pits of Travel and Investment," The New York Times, December 9, 2008
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