“I’m long tear gas after the Athens experience. They are going to need that tear gas in Rome and Madrid at some point,” said Steve Cortez at Veracruz Research.

“It’s a bit like looking for gold in a minefield,” said Fidelity International’s China Special Situation Fund manager, Anthony Bolton, amid widespread accounting fraud in the country.

“People think that Treasury bonds are riskless, but a 100 basis point rise in interest rates leads to an 18% capital loss,” said Andrew Neale, a portfolio manager at Fogel Neale Partners.

“I’m long tear gas after the Athens experience. They are going to need that tear gas in Rome and Madrid at some point,” said Steve Cortez at Veracruz Research.

“We’ve seen the S&P 500 drop 50% twice in the last decade. That is the new normal”, said Richard Kang of Emerging Global Advisors.

“Free choice is not relevant in financial markets because there are too many players. A stock with a million holders is much more predictable than one with five,” said Charles Nenner, of Charles Nenner Research in Amsterdam.”

“We are still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. I would have to put the likelihood of a double dip recession now up to 50%,” said my old UC Berkeley economics professor, Robert

“Earnings models that have worked over the last 10, 20, or 30 years don’t hold water anymore,” said Paul Schatz, president of Heritage Capital.

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open,” said Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone.

I enjoy issuing Berkshire stock as much as I relish preparing for a colonoscopy,” said Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/A).

“The Fed only knows two speeds; too fast, and too slow,” said Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman to me over lunch one day.

“If there were no way to short stocks, the probability of stock market bubbles would be much greater,” said hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman, of Pershing Square.

“The number one performing stock market of the past ten years in nominal terms has been Zimbabwe. But if you bought equities there you lost all your money because the ZWD$3 trillion you made now buys you three eggs,” said Kyle Bass of hedge fund, Hyman Capital.

“Take 200 round trips to Australia, and you really start to rack up the miles,” said Tom Stoker, and automotive sales analyst who just surpassed 10 million frequent flier points on United Airlines. It makes my own 1 million miles seen puny by comparison.  

“For the president to not focus on the financial industry in the wake of a financial crisis, he would have to be blind,” said former Federal Reserve governor, Paul Volker