Benjamin Franklin on writing

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Jeff Bezos on keeping an open mind

Anybody who doesn’t change their mind a lot is dramatically underestimating the complexity of the world we live in.

~ Jeff Bezos

Jerome Powell on the CARES Act

We won't run out of money.

~ Jerome Powell, "Powell urges Congress to unleash 'great fiscal power' to defeat coronavirus, repair economy," The Hill, April 29, 2020

Bill Maher on how Gen Z sees socialism

When I hear people nowadays, fact-free, if you look at Gen Z, a lot of them think "maybe communism, be good to give that another try."  They just don't understand, because they have this idea in their head that if something happened before they were alive, what does it matter?  It didn't really happen.  But stuff did happen.  Stuff did happen.  I know you weren't around for it, but it really did and other people noticed it and we learned that lesson.  Communism doesn't work and it makes people very cynical.

~ Bill Maher, "Here's Why Russia Invaded Ukraine, w/ Bill Maher and Ben Shapiro," The Ben Shapiro Show, 9:50 mark, March 14, 2022

Kevin Duffy on how the socialist sees inequality and wealth creation

Inequality is a blessing, not a problem.  Without it, specialization and trade (the division of labor) would not take place.  Trade, as long as it’s peaceful and voluntary, is mutually beneficial, win-win.  In other words, the more the merrier.  When the division of labor expands, good things happen, i.e. wealth increases. 

Of course, the distribution of this wealth will be uneven, depending on how adept individuals are at serving others.  But there’s nothing nefarious going on here.  In fact, entrepreneurs should be celebrated as they are the key drivers of human progress. 

Sadly, this is not how the socialist sees the world.  Instead, he sees a zero sum game, win-lose.  He assumes that those who accumulate great wealth must have stolen it from those who ended up with far less.  How, precisely, this theft takes place (when all transactions are voluntary), he can’t explain. 

Instead of forming a theory that models reality, the socialist bends reality to fit his theory. This is a fatal error, wreaking havoc on mankind, justifying government theft (win-lose) to correct an injustice that never existed.

~ Kevin Duffy, Quora answer, March 24, 2022

Kim Iskayan on the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Very rarely are things as bad as they appear in the here and now...  What we always see is that, yes, there is an adjustment period, but human beings are incredibly resourceful and resilient and antifragile and flexible, so markets adjust, people adjust.  Right now it feels pretty awful, and of course it's heartbreaking to see some of what's happening, but I think that 3 months from now this will be like, "yeah, that sucked."  And maybe it's still going on, but it's nowhere near as bad.

~ Kim Iskyan, "The Risks Have Yet to Come Home to Roost," Stansberry Investor Hour, 55:30 mark, March 14, 2022

Jeffrey Tucker on the military industrial complex and external enemies

In foreign relations, here we are today: the US is in a de facto but undeclared war with Russia.  No one calls it that, but that’s what it amounts to when the US is providing armaments through intermediaries to the forces that Russia is battling on its border.  This intensifies and escalates conflict, same as sanctions.  The dangers right now are intense, on all fronts.  It’s not clear that decision makers even understand what they are doing. 

Or maybe they do.  Since the end of the Cold War, the US military-industrial complex has been searching for a reliable enemy that the US population could hate, as a way to distract from the misdeeds of the political elite at home.  After decades of cycling through them, it appears that the old enemy was the best enemy.  And with a small turn of a dial, vast swaths of high-end opinion are exclusively focused on the terrible plight of Ukraine.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "How Seventy Years of Progress Came to an End," Brownstone Institute, March 11, 2022

Aeschylus on learning

To learn is to be young, however old.

~ Aeschylus

Aeschylus on war and truth

In war, truth is the first casualty.

~ Aeschylus

Vijay Prashad how the West sees colonialism

They still have this huge feeling that the West only acts to bring good, never for some bad purpose.  And the reverse of that is the adversaries of the West are always savages.  You see, that's the colonial mindset that the West goes into the colonies to civilize people, but when the colonial rises up and fights back, they are being savages.  

This goes back to the way Western reporters wrote about Khartoum, the Battle of Khartoum in 1884.  They wrote about the Boxer Rebellion in this way.  Every time the Chinese resisted the opium wars and so on, the Chinese were treated as savages in the media, like, "how dare you fight, and if you fight, you fight brutally."  When the Indians rose up in 1857 in the great Indian uprising against British rule, every British newspaper said, "these are savages, they conduct attrocities."  After that war ended, Indians who were caught by the British were strapped to cannons and the cannons were fired as a warning to others not to fight.  I mean, it's a brutal, brutal repression of people.  And yet, that doesn't change the impression of the West as aggressive.  The West is always doing things for human rights and the savages are always wrong.

~ Vijay Prashad, "Critic Vijay Prashad slams the West's belligerent foreign policy," CGTN, 2:45 mark, September 26, 2021

Warren Buffett on Bitcoin

The core use case for Bitcoin is to sell it to someone else.

~ Warren Buffett

Doug Casey on green energy

Wind and solar make no sense for mass power generation. They’re completely unsuitable for a complex industrial civilization. The Greens aren’t trying to solve a technological problem but make an ideological statement. Which is fine, except they’re doing it at the public’s expense. Meanwhile, the public has been so propagandized that they now feel it’s morally righteous to be hornswoggled. 

No problem if someone feels that covering his rooftop with solar panels can cut his electricity bill and pay back the cost in 7 or 10 years—which is roughly the case today. It’s something else entirely if a government puts a society’s electrical grid at risk in order to virtue signal.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey Debunks the So-called 'Green Economy'," International Man, March 11, 2022

Kevin Duffy on how socialists should lead by example

Q: How would a socialist convince a hard core capitalist to espouse their views? 

A: Talk is cheap.  Lead by example. 

Your goal is to eradicate private property.  Your means are govermental force.  That scares people who think they will lose everything they’ve worked their lives for with very little in return. 

Instead, try showing them how this can work voluntarily and on a small scale.  Once you’ve achieved that, you should have no problem convincing others to join your experiment.  As my mother likes to say, “you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

~ Kevin Duffy, Quora answer, March 13, 2022

Jim Rogers on Russian stocks

I am not sure why Putin is keeping this up...  I'm not sure why Washington hasn't said, why Ukraine hasn't said, "Ok, we're not going to join NATO.  We'll sign a treaty that we will not join NATO."  What do we care if Ukraine is part of NATO or not?  That would solve the problem and if that happens - no, of course for a while people are going to be angry at Russia, rightly or wrongly, it doesn't matter... - but that would mean that Russian stocks are very, very, very cheap.  Eventually, I presume, that people would be drinking tea with the Russians again and drinking vodka and having a good time with the Russians again.  I doubt if it [the war] will last forever.  We had a horrible war with the Germans and the Japanese...  Now they're our great friends.  So times change.  Peoples' attitudes change.  And if you buy something cheap you usually - if you have staying power - usually make money.

~ Jim Rogers, interview with Daniela Cambone, Stansberry Research, 17:00 mark, March 8, 2022

Muhammad Ali on what makes a champion

Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision.

~ Muhammad Ali

Ali knocks out Sonny Liston

Jim Rogers on the death of the U.S. dollar

But what is happening now with the U.S. dollar now is the end of the U.S. dollar because an international currency is supposed to be neutral, but in Washington they are now changing the rules.  Now if Washington does not like you, they put sanctions on you and you cannot use U.S. dollars.

~ Jim Rogers

(As quotes by Daniela Cambone in her interview with Jim Rogers, Stansberry Research, 4:00 mark, March 8, 2022.)

Rachel Denber on the 2019 state language law in Ukraine

A new legal provision on the use of the Ukrainian language, part of a broader state language law, raises concerns about protection for minority languages. 

The provision, which entered into force on January 16, is stipulated in article 25 of the law. It requires print media outlets registered in Ukraine to publish in Ukrainian. Publications in other languages must also be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content, volume, and method of printing. Additionally, places of distribution such as newsstands must have at least half their content in Ukrainian. 

The state language law requires that Ukrainian be used in most aspects of public life. The law was adopted and signed by former President Petro Poroshenko in 2019, as he was leaving office, with several provisions scheduled to come into force in subsequent years.

~ Rachel Denber, "New Language Requirement Raises Concerns in Ukraine," Human Rights Watch, January 19, 2022

Iam Bremmer on why Big Business favors government intervention

I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences - they're not interested in free markets.

~ Iam Bremmer, "The West Should Fear the Growth of State Capitalism," interview with James Quinn, www.telegraph.co.uk., July 10, 2010

Pierre Lassonde: "Mr. Powell has to feel like a porcupine in a balloon factory"

The Fed is in a box.  They have $20 trillion of debt.  They cannot raise interest rates more than 1% or 1 1/2% without putting the economy back in the toilet.  They have nowhere to go.  Mr. Powell has to feel like a porcupine in a balloon factory.  He cannot move.  It doesn't matter because the real rate of interest, which is really what matters to gold, is going to stay deeply negative for the next four years which is exactly what happened in the 1970s...  Gold is going to fly. 

~ Pierre Lassonde, "Pierre Lassonde predicts $200 oil and $2,400 gold in a month as Putin’s war drags out," Kitco News interview, 8:40 mark, February 28, 2022

Kevin Duffy on critics

Critics get a bad rap sometimes.  They're actually optimists who see room for improvement.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, March 6, 2022

Kim Iversen on poking the Russian dog

The dog barked and barked and growled and growled.  People even pointed year after year that the dog is growling and dangerous, yet we kept taunting the dog, and now the dog is attacking.  And we're sitting here acting shocked, claiming there was no provocation on our end. 

~ Kim Iversen, "Kim Iversen: ”Ukraine Will Be Wrecked." OMINOUS Warnings Of NATO-Provoked War Given For DECADES," The Hill, 7:00 mark, March 2, 2022

Kim Iversen on the end of American hegemony

I do think this is about NATO expansion.  I think that's upset Putin.  I also think this was very planned.  And I think we are being very shortsighted thinking that this is just a Ukraine issue.  I don't think this is about Ukraine.  I think this is about American hegemony.  And the more we understand this: that is what they're taking on [Russia and China], we're already in World War III, be just don't realize it.  Hopefully it doesn't escalate to a nuclear war, but at this point they're taking us on.  That statement, if you read the whole statement that was put out by China and Russia on February 4th, it is ominous.  They're basically saying, "Your days are numbered, guys.  It's over." 

They then forge all these economic partnerships to one another and then suddenly Russia goes in and invades Ukraine, as if they were going to have a NATO vote tomorrow to bring them in?  They weren't.  There was nothing truly imminent about it.  Why did it happen?  Because I think these guys planned this out and thought this through and I think the U.S. dollar's been replaced.  We just don't realize it yet...

~ Kim Iversen, "Kim Iversen: Ukraine-Russia Is REALLY About The Demise Of US Hegemony, Petrodollar," The Hill, 15:00 mark, March 1, 2022

Chris Hedges on NATO buildup that preceded Russia's invasion of Ukraine

NATO is building a missile base in Poland that's a hundred miles from the border with Russia.  We almost had a nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba.  That's 90 miles from the coast of Florida.  I don't think Russia's fear and sense of betrayal...  I don't think any of that is unreasonable.  That's the tragedy.  That does again - I'm going to reiterate - not justify the war crime that they have committed and are committing in the Ukraine, but they had far more reason to be concerned than we did in Iraq where we just fabricated and lied and created weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.

~ Chris Hedges, "Ukraine: Prelude to a War Crime," 16:00 mark, March 3, 2022

Jim Grant on margin of safety and possible repeat of 1973-74

The point to mark about 1973 [oil shock followed by recession and severe bear market] is not the risk that it literally repeats, but only to give unscripted events their due.  The central bankers haven’t feared them, much less prepared for them. Listening to the mandarins talk these past 10 years, one would suppose that they were in charge of the future. 

The idea of a margin of safety itself went out the window. It was no longer necessary, many came to reason, not in logistics, inventory management, geopolitics, pandemic medicine or investment-portfolio construction.

~ Jim Grant, "Break ball in a pool game," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, March 4, 2022

Jamie Dimon on banking restrictions following sanctions against Russia

I'm an American patriot and we're going to do what the American government tells us to do.

~ Jamie Dimon, Bloomberg interview, March 3, 2022

Kevin Duffy on the everything bubble

Meme stock madness was the umbrella on top of an all-encompassing cocktail served to far more than retail investors.  Central bankers, mainstream media, academia, Silicon Valley and the military industrial complex all imbibed from the same glass: a belief that government is the solution to all problems.  These institutions, drunk with power, formed twin personalities: enabler and disciplinarian, arsonist and fireman, gas-lighter and psychologist, social butterfly and censor, trouble-maker and policeman.  They created a new reality to justify their existence, but it was always a delusion. 

Morning comes soon enough.  The party was fun while it lasted, but tremendous damage was done.  The hangover is never pretty, but signifies a much needed, albeit unpleasant, return to health.  Likewise, bear markets and recessions have their place: They remove toxins, impart lessons, encourage productive behaviors and provide a path back to financial health.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Hangover," The Coffee Can Portfolio, March 1, 2022

Murray Rothbard on collective security vs. neutrality

The collective-security concept that so enchanted the old (pre-1965) left sounded pretty good: Each nation-state was viewed as if it were an individual, so that when one state ‘aggressed against’ another, it became the duty of the governments of the world to step in and punish the ‘aggressor.’  In that way, the bitter and lengthy war in Korea became, in President Truman’s famous phrase, a ‘police action,’ needing no declaration of war but simply an executive decision by the world’s chief cop — the president of the United States — to be set into motion.  All other “law-abiding” nations and responsible organs of opinion were supposed to join in. 

The ‘isolationist’ right saw several grave flaws in this notion of collective security and the analogy between states and individuals.  One, of course, is that there is no world government or world cop, as there are national governments and police.  Each state has its own war-making machine, many of which are quite awesome.  When gangs of states wade into a conflict, they inexorably widen it.  Every tinpot controversy, the latest and most blatant being the fracas in the Falkland Islands, invites other nations to decide which of the states is ‘the aggressor’ and then leap in on the virtuous side.  Every local squabble thus threatens to escalate into a global conflagration. 

And since, according to collective security enthusiasts, the United States has apparently been divinely appointed to be the chief world policeman, it is thereby justified in throwing its massive weight into every controversy on the face of the globe. 

The other big problem with the collective-security analogy is that, in contrast to spotting thieves and muggers, it is generally difficult or even impossible to single out uniquely guilty parties in conflicts between states.  For although individuals have well-defined property rights that make someone else’s invasion of that property a culpable act of aggression, the boundary lines of each state have scarcely been arrived at by just and proper means.  Every state is born in, and exists by, coercion and aggression over its citizens and subjects, and its boundaries invariably have been determined by conquest and violence.  But in automatically condemning one state for crossing the borders of another, we are implicitly recognizing the validity of existing boundaries.  Why should the boundaries of a state in 1982 be any more or less just than they were in 1972, 1932, or 1872?  Why must they be automatically enshrined as sacred, so much so that a mere boundary crossing should lead every state in the world to force their citizens to kill or die? 

No, far better and wiser is the old classical liberal foreign policy of neutrality and nonintervention, a foreign policy set forth with great eloquence by Richard Cobden, John Bright, the Manchester school and other ‘little Englanders’ of the nineteenth century, by the Anti-Imperialist classical liberals of the turn of the twentieth century in Britain and the United States, and by the old right from the 1930s to the 1950s.  Neutrality limits conflicts instead of escalating them.  Neutral states cannot swell their power through war and militarism, or murder and plunder the citizens of other states.

~ Murray Rothbard

(Quoted by Lew Rockwell, "Keep US Out of War," February 28, 2022.)

Michael Rozeff on economic sanctions

Sanctions are wrong for the same reason that dropping a hydrogen bomb on Moscow would be wrong.  They target innocent people.  They are wrong for the same reason that attacking the Taliban government in Afghanistan was wrong, when bin Laden was the accused.  They are wrong for the same reason that attacking Iraq was wrong when Saddam Hussein was the accused target.  They are wrong for the same reason that bombing Libya was wrong when Gaddafi was the accused target.

~ Michael Rozeff, "The Theory of Economic Sanctions is Wrong," LewRockwell.com, March 14, 2014

(Quoted by Lew Rockwell, "Keep US Out of War," February 28, 2022.)

Nathan Meyer Rothschild on investing around wars

Buy when the cannons are firing and sell when the trumpets are blowing.

~ Nathan Meyer Rothschild