Laszlo Birinyi on Goldman Sachs

Goldman is interesting because Warren Buffett owns so much of it. He went through a somewhat similar circumstance with Salomon Brothers, so he has experience with the government agencies. Goldman has a franchise, and -- again we are talking about for your grandchildren, not for your family's Christmas presents -- I think that this will be a very positive stock to own.

~ Laszlo Birinyi, "Invest Like It's 1982," Barron's Online, June 22, 2010

Peter Orszag on the historical risk of GSE debt

On the basis of historical experience, the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero.

~ Peter R. Orszag, soon-to-be-former Director of Office of Management and Budget, conclusion of the academic paper "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-Based Capital Standard", co-authored with Joseph Stiglitz, 2002

Joe Saluzzi on the weakness of the financial markets

We are one headline away from S&P 900.

~Joe Saluzzi, co-head of trading, Themis Trading, Bloomberg News, June 24th, 2010

Rick Santelli on the U.S. government

Our government is a free-for-all of dumb ideas.

~ Rick Santelli, CNBC "Strategy Session," June 24, 2010

David Galland on the debt crisis

[T]his [debt] crisis is not going to go quietly to its dirt nap. Instead, the end will almost certainly be akin to a Viking funeral with the political equivalent of rape followed by a raging fire on a sinking ship. Riots in the street and a serious degradation in the quality of life of the majority of the citizenry are all but inevitable, followed by a sea change in the political landscape.

~ David Galland, managing editor of Casey Research, "Why Won't You Die, Damn it!,"June 22, 2010

David Ross on what it means to be an entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is someone who sleeps the same whether they've got a million dollars in profit or a million dollars in debt.

~David Ross, PhD (Professor of hot Dogs), former co-president of the Burger Boat Company, founder of Dr. Dawg restaurants, June 12th, 2010

Ed Markey on the Gulf oil spill and waiving the Jones Act

Markey said the Obama administration should consider waiving the Jones Act, which requires ships operating in U.S. waters to be owned and operated by U.S. companies, as part of an “all-hands-on deck” spill response.

“We have to look at all parts of the world to find the help we need to ensure that we minimize the harm that is done to the people who live in the Gulf region,” said Markey, chairman of the House Energy Committee’s energy and environment panel.

The Department of State is considering offers of vessels from the European Maritime Safety Agency, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden and Vietnam offered vessels, according to a report yesterday.

~ Congressman Edward Markey, D-MA, "Anadarko, Mitsui Should Pay Share BP Spill Claims, Markey Say," Bloomberg.com, June 18, 2010

Felix Zulauf on the coming currency reform due to repeated financial crises

We are in the final, in the end game, of this system.

It means that we will enter a deflationary period that is accelerating, and the policymakers are trying to counter-act and fight this by using highly inflationary policies. It's sort of a dance on a high-rope, a high-risk dance, and we don't know for certain which way the dancer will eventually fall down to-- some argue it's going to be a deflationary collapse and others argue that it will be hyperinflation.

I think the deflationary pressure on our system will increase and intensify over the next few years and we will come to the point where we will have Lehman, AIG, Citi, in one day happening. At that point in time, there is no way the banking system can handle it.

Therefore, next time, the governments can not come in again because many of those governments are already perceived as bust, too. At that point in time I think the central banks will come in big time and you will see that the balance sheets of the central banks will not expand by a factor of 2 or 3, but of 50, or 100, or something like that.

And once that happens, you will have virtually, in a few weeks, a situation where basically you make our currencies as we knew them, invaluable-- you destroy them.

~ Felix Zulauf, King World News, May 28th, 2010

Felix Zulauf on the gold bull market

The ongoing bull market in gold, which is really a bear market in all of the other currencies, will continue for a number of more years.

~ Felix Zulauf, King World News, May 28th, 2010

Felix Zulauf on gold as the ultimate currency

Big money investors have realized that they need to hide in a currency that has no liabilities and can not be created out of thin-air just by pushing a button or writing a note, or whatever, by central banks.

Gold, I see, not as a commodity but as the ultimate currency, a currency that can not be increased without working hard and getting it out of the ground.

~ Felix Zulauf, King World News, May 28th, 2010

Fred Hickey on the media's attitude towards gold

The media remains outright hostile towards [gold]. Last month Fortune magazine titled a story, "The Coming Gold Bust." Time Magazine had its own version: "Is Gold About to Bust?" CNBC host Simon Hobbs foams at the mouth when he speaks about gold. Last month Hobbs asked a gold bull the following loaded question: "So Jerry, would you still be advising widows and orphans to join the great pyramid selling scheme to buy gold in the hopes that others will follow you and push the price still higher?" For good measure, Hobbs declared at the end of the segment that "Gold isn't a store of value, it's a nonsense!"

~ Fred Hickey, editor, The High-Tech Strategist, June 4, 2010

Fred Hickey on unsustainable living standards

Dr. Bernanke has unwittingly helped create a monster, an 'Abby Normal' world economy where excessive government interventions keep market forces from clearing the imbalances. Most of the developed world countries consume too much, produce too little, retire too early and borrow too much in an attempt to sustain ultimately unsustainable standards of living. That's true in Greece, Spain and England, as well as in the United States.

~ Fred Hickey, editor, The High-Tech Strategist, June 4, 2010

Oppenheimer's Brian Belski on the fundamentals never having been better (to some degree)

There's a lot of headline risk right now because of what's going on in the Gulf and what's going on in Europe, people just don't feel very good about buying equities. One of the things that [Commerce] Secretary Locke talked about earlier was the fundamentals of our economy in corporate America almost, to some degree, have never been better.

Yes, the trajectory of employment is heading in the right direction, but we need to see more job gains.

~ Brian Belski, analyst, Oppenheimer & Co., "Market Breakdown", CNBC, June 7th, 2010

Marc Faber on a new model for financial analysis

It is no longer sufficient to analyze macroeconomic and microeconomic trends and individual companies and sectors; we now increasingly need the help of a political analyst who can warn us of what governments’ next regulatory ‘Schnapsideen’ (ideas developed while heavily intoxicated) are likely to be.

~ Marc Faber, editor, Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, The Daily Reckoning

Fran Lebowitz on war

The first step in having any successful war is getting people to fight it.

~ Fran Lebowitz, Social Studies, (1981)

Charlie Gasparino on Warren Buffett as a conflicted commentator on the financial markets

This is the problem with Warren Buffett: I'm sure he's a nice guy, I've known him for years, obviously he's a great investor, smart man; reporters tend to put him on a pedestal where they forget that this guy often talks his own book.

In defending the ratings agencies, and I've gotten a lot of calls from ratings agencies people today, their defenders, their flacks, they all say listen to what Buffett said. The reality is he's a conflict of interest, in and of himself. He owns a big piece of Moody's so of course he's going to defend it.

~Charles Gasparino, Fox Business News, June 2nd, 2010