Jim Cramer: "If you bet against NVIDIA, you're taking your life in your hands"

If you judge this one by last year's standard, NVIDIA looks like the easiest short of all time.  The stock's doubled off its lows last October and if you think the bear's coming out of hibernation, this is the one you want to short in May and go away.  But if you bet against NVIDIA, if you short it here, let me give you a little heads up: you're taking your life in your hands.  Don't forget to send me an invite to your funeral...  NVIDIA is now the definition of unstoppable.

~ Jim Cramer, CNBC's Mad Money, 4:25 mark, April 14, 2023

Gene Epstein on Adam Smith's anti-free market arguments

[Adam] Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations, includes a whole range of sustained arguments that were anti-free market and even pro-socialist.  Ignoring these arguments by Smith is not only dishonest, it's dangerous.  The more we elevate Smith to the status of the founder of free enterprise, the greater the danger that enemies of the free market will strike back by citing Smith against us.  This anti-capitalist gotcha gang that has cited Smith against us already includes the left-wing critic Noah Chomsky, theologian and progressive writer Harvey Cox, Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, and even an Occupy Wall Streeter who ran from a copy of The Wealth of Nations while arguing with free marketeer Peter Schiff.

~ Gene Epstein, "Is Adam Smith the Founder of Free Market Economics?," debate between Mark Skousen and Gene Epstein, The Sofo Forum, 16:30 mark, June 13, 2017

Gene Epstein on the beginning of modern economics

It did not all start with Adam [Smith].  It started with a bunch of people.  Intellectual history is not a popularity contest.  We accord it according to originality, pioneering work and merit.  We have integrity.

~ Gene Epstein, "Is Adam Smith the Founding Father of Economics?," The Soho Forum, 1:26:30 mark, June 13, 2017

H.L. Mencken on government

[Government’s] great contribution to human wisdom... is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

~ H.L. Mencken

Benjamin Graham on "Mr. Market"

Imagine that in some private business you own a small share that cost you a thousand dollars.  One of your partners, who's named Mr. Market, is very obliging indeed.  Every day he tells you what he thinks your interest is worth and furthermore either offers to buy you out or sell to you an additional interest on that basis.  Sometimes his idea of value seems plausible and justified by business developments and prospects, as you know them.  Often, on the other hand, Mr. Market lets his enthusiasm or his fears run away with him, and the value he proposes seems to you a little short of silly. 

~ Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor (1949)

(As quoted by Dan Ferris, "The Secret to Beating Mr. Market': A Lesson in Value Investing," Stansberry Investor Hour, 6:40 mark, April 10, 2023)

Joseph Wang: "It looks like the banking panic is largely over"

It looks like the banking panic is largely over.  The two data points that I follow, the Fed balance sheet and my money market flow data, are showing encouraging signs.  So when a bank is in trouble, they borrow from the Fed as lender of last resort.  Weekly Fed data shows that borrowing is declining.  And we also show that money is going back into prime money market funds.  Prime money market funds lend to banks and during the panic people were pulling money away...  That's all coming back.  That tells me that the banking panic is over.

[...]

I suspect, based on the aggregate data and based on what I see in the banking system, that the large banks are going to be fine.  They're going to be in good shape.  There might be some small banks that are struggling, but we have to remember that America is a very big place.  We have 4,000 banks, most of them small, and it seems like what happened over the past month is largely regional.  So I'm optimistic.

~ Joseph Wang, Fed Guy blogger, Yahoo Finance interview, April 11, 2023

Joseph Wang on banks: "they create money out of thin air"

Banks create money.  That's their thing.  It's not so much that they take deposits and lend them out, but they create money out of thin air.

~ Joseph Wang, Fed Guy blogger, Monetary Macro CIO, Yahoo Finance interview, 5:25 mark, April 11, 2023