Seattle Post-Intelligencer gives debut of The Bachelor two thumbs down (2002)

ABC could have saved a ton on limousine fees if it had shrink-wrapped 25 women and placed them in the meat case at Safeway.

 ~ Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2002

Bill Bonner: "investment markets reward virtue and punish sin"

We are, frankly, in far too much awe of the world, and too deeply entertained by it, to think that we can understand it today or foretell tomorrow.  Life's most attractive components - love and money - are far too complex for reliable soothsaying.  Still, we can't resist taking a guess.

We may not know how the world works, but we are immodest enough to think we can know how it does not work.  The stock market is not, for example, a simple mechanism like an ATM machine, where you merely tap in the right numbers to get cash out when you need it.  Instead, the investment markets - like life itself - are always complicated, often perverse, and occasionally absurd.  But that does not mean that they are completely random; though unexpected, life's surprises may not always be undeserved.  Delusions have consequences.  And, sooner or later, the reckoning day comes and the bills must be paid.

In this sense, the investment markets are not mechanistic at all, but judgmental.  As we will see, they reward virtue and punish sin.

~ Bill Bonner, Financial Reckoning Day (2006), p. 2

The New York Times: "A taxi medallion is comparable to buying an apartment in Manhattan" (2011)

A taxi medallion is comparable to buying an apartment in Manhattan. It will always make good money and pay for itself.

~ The New York Times, 2011

Bill Bonner on the upward (bumpy) slope of human progress

When it comes to science and technology, man learns.  When it comes to love, war, and finance, he makes the same mistakes over and over again.

~ Bill Bonner

Kevin Duffy on the learning process

The learning process, if pursued long enough, goes through many phases: trepidation, pain, comfort, confidence, overconfidence, mistakes that bring more pain, and ultimately humility.

We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.

~ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Foreign Affairs, July/August 1995