“If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying,” said folk singer, Bob Dillon.

“If I relied on my customers to tell me what they wanted, they’d ask for faster horses,” said Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motors.

When I left the Treasury Department, 92% of the American public were against the TARP, but only 60% were against torture. That gives you some idea how much Americans are against bailouts,” said for Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson.

I don’t know that the retail investor matters anymore. They didn’t come back to the market after the 2000 crash. The idea that the individual investor believes in the stock market now is challenged. We have a market that is increasingly institutional investors trading back and forth with each other”, said Dan Greenhouse, chief global [...]

“Above $100 a barrel we are starting to flirt with demand destruction, and at some point that will begin to kick in, probably later this year,” said Tom Petrie, co-founder of Petrie Parkman, a Houston energy based investment bank.

“From an economic standpoint, it is very hard to argue against the idea that the economy is gaining some steam here. A lot of those negative beliefs are starting to turn, such as credit. The upside risks to equities are greater than the downside risks”, said Dan Greenhouse, chief global strategist at BTIG.

“We are witnessing the death of abundance and the birth of austerity for what may be a very, very long time,” said PIMCO managing director, Bill Gross, the world’s largest bond manager.

“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 transition from a levering, asset-inflating secular economy to a post bubble delivering era may be as difficult for one to imagine as our departure into the hereafter,” said PIMCO managing director, Bill Gross, the world’s largest bond manager.

“A central bank is best that governs least, but is prepared to govern radically when called upon,” said 19th century man of letters, Walter Bagehot, an early editor of The Economist

“When you talk to private clients, they are nowhere near putting money into equities yet. You can’t even get them to understand dividend growth, let alone buying equities, because they are still worried about losing money. People are going to be very emotional. This is going to be a year of volatility until proven otherwise,” [...]

‘If you can get a dividend higher than the yield on ten year debt, it’s an opportunity we haven’t seen in our lifetime. On a five year horizon, investing in large multinationals with high dividends will have a large payday’ said Lawrence Fink, CEO of Black Rock.

“Banks have turned into gigantic gambling institutions. You never know what you own. I wouldn’t touch them if you pointed a gun to my head,” said legendary hedge fund manager Bill Fleckenstein on Hedge Fund Radio. Click on my “Podcast” page above to hear the interview.  

‘There is one peculiarity about mass psychology in that when you are in a bubble, you can’t see it. Bubbles are invisible when you are inside the bubble,’ said the charming Jim Dines, of The Dines Letter.

‘Total credit market debt in the world has gone from $80 trillion to $200 trillion in the last ten years, an 11% annual rate, while GDP has grown by 4%. This can’t continue. It’s a simple matter of arithmetic,’ said Kyle Bass, of hedge fund Hayman Partners.