John Foster Dulles on making mistakes

Once - many, many years ago - I thought I made a wrong decision.  Of course, it turned out that I had been right all along.  But I was wrong to have thought that I was wrong.

~ John Foster Dulles

January 5, 1955

 

Ron Unz on the decline of America

The truth is, when you look at the audience here, all of you, regardless of whether you're young or old have lived your entire lives when America was the most powerful, most successful country in the world and in many cases, the most prosperous country in the world.  But the problem is prosperity, power and success breed arrogance.  It breeds an unwillingness to look at reality and the result of that many times is the nemesis of a country and I think we're seeing that right now in the United States, and we've been seeing that for at least the last couple of decades.

~ Ron Unz, "The Decline of America," "Mises in Reno" event, 0.25 mark, May 23, 2023

Sheldon Richman on U.S. meddling in the Middle East

Whether the United States was trying to keep the shah of Iran in power or trying to prevent the rise of Arab nationalism and nonalignment, its policy was a blunt instrument applied presumptuously to subtle and complicated problems.  One journalist has likened it to playing pool with a 20-foot cue stick.  It would have been a miracle had the result not been chronic turmoil.  The impracticality of the policy would have been a stumbling block even if the United States had not been on the side of injustice.

~ Sheldon Richman, "'Ancient History': U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention," Cato Institute, August 16, 1991

Brock Lovett on experience working against Titanic's captain

26 years of experience working against him [captain John Edward Smith].  He figures anything big enough to sink the ship they're gonna see in time to turn.  The ship's too big with too small a rudder.  It doesn't corner worth a damn.  Everything he knows is wrong.

~ Brock Lovett (as played by Bill Paxton), treasure hunter in the 1997 movie Titanic

Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean on what drove Jeff Skilling and brought down Enron

Just as he had when Enron was riding high, Skilling labeled ExxonMobil a "dinosaur" - as thought it didn't matter that the oil giant was thriving while Enron was nearly extinct.  "We were doing something special.  Magical."  The money wasn't what really mattered to him, insisted Skilling, who banked $70 million from Enron stock.  "It wasn't a job - it was a mission," he liked to say.  "We were changing the world.  We were doing God's work."

In the public eye, Enron's mission was nothing more than the cover story for a massive fraud.  But what brought Enron down was something more complex - and more tragic - than simple thievery.  The tale of Enron is a story of human weakness, of hubris and greed and rampant self-delusion; of ambition run amok; of a grand experiment in the deregulated world; of a business model that didn't work; and of smart people who believed their next gamble would cover their last disaster - and who couldn't admit they were wrong.

~ Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean, The Smartest Guys in the Room, p. xxi

Daniel McAdams on the evil empire in DC

Jeff Deist: There is a tremendous amount of hubris in the West today.  The whole world has to share our principles and our form of governance, essentially social democracy.  And this should be maintained through international governance in the form of the United Nations or the World Bank or whatever.  From my perspective this is just the twenty-first-century version of imperialism and colonialism.  It is ideological colonialism.

Daniel McAdams: Yes, and worse because we can kill a lot more people a lot quicker.  The people that jump on the bandwagon, "We've got to do this, we've got to overthrow X," you are living in a country whose foreign policy and military leadership are responsible for the deaths of millions.  You have a president who just droned a family and then lied about it, started wars, who's now holding nearly a hundred people in a gulag in DC because they happened to set foot in the Capitol building on January 6.  This is one of the most repressive regimes in the world, and if you doubt that, step out of line.

~ Daniel McAdams, "All the Trouble in the World," The Austrian, November-December 2021

Dr. Sohrab Lutchmedial on the Covid vaccine (2021)

So happy to do my part.  I'm really looking forward to visiting my father again and not being worried when I do.

~ Dr. Sohrab Lutchmedial, after receiving his first mRNA vaccine, January 16, 2021

For those who won't get the vaccine for selfish reasons - whatever - I won't cry at their funeral.

~ tweet, July 10, 2021

The vaccine has been tested on youth and looks undeniably safe.  You have a higher chance of getting into a car accident on your way to hockey practice than you do having a complication from this vaccine.

~ Facebook post, September 25, 2021

I think all of us would treat that unvaxxed patient with respect and to the best of our abilities.  But the people that convinved them not to get vaxxed?  I want to punch those people in the face.

~ tweet, October 9, 2021

Dr. Lutchmedial received his third vaccine shot on October 24 and passed away in his sleep on November 8.

1969-2021

Cathie Wood on recent correction: "Nothing has changed for us"

We were hit with a bout of volatility...  Nothing has changed for us...  If we use our 5-year price targets, instead of expecting a 15% compounded annual rate of return - no promises here, compliance will be happy that I say that - instead of 15%, which is where we were at the peak in February, we now believe that our portfolios will deliver closer to 25% compound annual rate of return.  Again, no promises, but all  I'm saying is the bout of volatility did not change our price targets.  They gave us a great opportunity to concentrate towards our highest conviction names.

~ Cathie Wood, Bloomberg interview, 1:30 mark, April 14, 2021

Janet Yellen on fighting inflation (2021)

I've spent many years studying inflation and worrying about inflation.  And I can tell you we have the tools to deal with that risk if it materializes.

~ Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, virtually roundtable in Washington, DC, February 5, 2021

Kevin Duffy on central bankers: "beyond the point of no return"

Is it possible the central bankers will admit the error of their ways and back away from their grand experiment?  Don’t bet on it.  Ideology and conviction – what Barbara Tuchman calls “wooden-headedness” – are a potent mix.

Strongly held beliefs are nearly impossible to let go, especially when the world is backing you with trillions of poker chips and genuflecting at your genius.  Central bankers are all-in.  There is no folding.  They are well beyond the point of no return.

For better or worse, they hold the losing hand.

~ Kevin Duffy, The Coffee Can Portfolio, August 11, 2020

Barbara Tuchman on "wooden-headedness"

It may be asked why, since folly or perversity is inherent in individuals, should we expect anything else of government?  The reason for concern is that folly in government has more impact on more people than individual follies, and therefore governments have a greater duty to act according to reason.  Just so, and since this has been known for a very long time, why has not our species taken precautions and erected safeguards against it?...

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government.  It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs.  It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts...

Wooden-headedness is also the refusal to benefit from experience, a characteristic in which medieval rulers of the 14th century were supreme.  No matter how often and obviously devaluation of the currency disrupted the economy and angered the people, the Valois monarchs of France resorted to it whenever they were desperate for cash until they provoked insurrection by the bourgeoisie.  In warfare, the métier of the governing class, wooden-headedness was conspicuous.  No matter how often a campaign that depended on living off a hostile country ran into want and even starvation, as in the English invasions of France in the Hundred Years' War, campaigns for which this fate was inevitable were regularly undertaken.

~ Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly, pp. 6-8

Friedrich Hayek on the task of economics

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

~ Friedrich Hayek

Morgan Stanley strategist Adam Parker: "I don't think 15.5 times earnings for the S&P 500 is in bubble territory"

I think we all romanticize that we're going to sniff out the bubble the day before everyone else and get rich and famous for it, but at the end of the day I don't think 15.5 times earnings for the S&P 500 is in bubble territory. 

I think that there's been some real changes to the market because of the quantitative easing.  And the number one important thing is that basically companies have all pushed out their financial obligations for 2 or 3 years so the balance sheets are in great shape and the risk of bankruptcy is very low.  That's been a big change over the last few years.

If we're about to head into a bubble, then you'll want to be long for a while.  I think everyone wants to call in and talk about it. If you want to call the top of the cycle, two things would be in place. One is hubris. And the other is debt. Hubris meaning some form of management arrogance gone awry. ... I don't think we're very frothy on that point.

~ Adam Parker, Morgan Stanley market strategist, as appeared on CNBC's Squawk on the Street, March 11, 2014

Paul Volcker on Harvard University and Great Society elitism

INTERVIEWER: You said Keynesianism was almost a religion at Harvard when you were there?

PAUL VOLCKER: They did have other people there, you know. John Williams was the other macroeconomist there, certainly financial-side, and he was a very skeptical practitioner. He didn't spend all his time professing, and he advised the Federal Reserve back in New York at great lengths. I can't say everybody was Keynesian, but the younger school certainly was. It was Paul Samuelson, Jim Tobin, and all of them had grown up in the Keynesian climate. I didn't know them all, but they were all circulating. They were the bright young stars of Harvard at the time.

INTERVIEWER: When did you begin to have doubts? How early did you begin to become skeptical about things?

PAUL VOLCKER: I was already skeptical. I guess I'm skeptical about everything. I've gotten worse in my old age, but I was a little bit turned off by the precision and certainty that these people attached to the doctrine. The analytic framework was very convincing, but this feeling they had, that they could press the right buttons and manage the economy pretty exactly, for some reason it turned me off. I was very skeptical that they were not overselling the precision of this theory and the precision [with] which they could run policy.

INTERVIEWER: Was that a gut instinct, or was that something you picked up?

PAUL VOLCKER: It must have been a gut instinct. I don't know why, but I was just a little bit turned off by the sense of certainty that they had.

INTERVIEWER: You actually talked about the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson, and you used the word "hubris" in that context. Would you say that that kind of attitude reached a peak?

PAUL VOLCKER: Yes,. There's no question in terms of its policy application that that approach reached its peak in the Kennedy-Johnson years, when in the Harvard years it was still intellectual concept. It really hadn't permeated fully the political decision-making [process]. It hadn't reached its apogee, which it certainly reached in the Kennedy-Johnson days, and they felt they'd solved the problem in the business cycle. They'd solved a problem with macroeconomics; it was time to turn to other microeconomic things, [and] it was time to turn to welfare questions, because they'd solved the problem. I'm not exaggerating very much when I say that. They had a very long period of economic advancement, and things were going pretty smoothly. Productivity was high, and unemployment was low.

~ Paul Volcker, Commanding Heights interview (PBS), September 26, 2000

Jamie Dimon speech at University of Washington

It’s okay for us at times to blame and be dissatisfied with others and hold them responsible, but it’s not okay to oversimplify and paint everyone with the same brush. It should not be acceptable to denigrate entire groups, not all companies, not all CEOs, not all politicians, not all media, not all students.

Jamie Dimon, CEO, JP Morgan Chase, Bloomberg, November 2, 2011

US Bancorp CEO Richard Davis on bank practices

Everybody’s breaking the rules, blah blah blah, Get over it.

Richard Davis, CEO US Bancorp, Minneapolis News, November 2, 2011

"Warren Buffett of China" Yang Liu, on Buffett and China

I'm 45 years old, he's 80. My compounded annual gross return is 30% a year. His isn't. My returns are seven times over the past 15 years. Is that a miracle? It is.

This coming 10 years is the golden age. You must own China.

~Yang Liu, manager, Atlantis China fund, Barron's, May 7, 2011

Eike Batista on his biggest concern

My biggest concern? Well, none.

~Eike Batista, chairman and CEO, EBX Group, CNBC interview, May 4, 2011

Eike Batista on his quest to become the world's richest man

I have created 5 companies that have in them, embedded resources, worth $2 trillion, at very low cost to produce them. So, it's just a question of time [before he becomes the world's richest man] okay? So, Mr. Slim, I'm sorry, I don't know if I'm going to pass him on the right side or the left side but it's going to happen.

I haven't finished drilling yet. At today's prices we have $2.3 trillion of underlying assets.

~Eike Batista, chairman and CEO, EBX Group, CNBC interview, May 4, 2011

George W. Bush on the Iraq War (2003)

Mission accomplished!

~ President George W. Bush regarding the Iraq War, May 1, 2003