“The government is now the biggest impediment to economic growth,” said my old friend, Steve Rattner, of the Quandrangle Group. … [Read more...]

“If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re going to get a ticket,” said Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffet, in reference to Bank of America’s many legal problems. … [Read more...]

“The Obamacare website, had technical issues all week because of too much web traffic. You can't campaign on the fact that millions don't have health care and then be surprised that millions don't have health care. How could you not be ready? That's like 1-800-FLOWERS getting caught off guard by Valentine's Day,” said a comedian on Saturday Night Live. … [Read more...]

“Green technology is one of the best investment opportunities we’ve ever seen. We are used to seeing billion dollar market opportunities. Here, we’re seeing a trillion dollar opportunity.” said venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. … [Read more...]

“If they don’t screw things up in Washington, stocks here are undervalued. If they do, then stocks are overvalued,” said hedge fund manager, David Tepper, of Appaloosa Management. … [Read more...]

“Confidence is like oxygen. You don’t notice until it’s gone, and then it’s the only thing you notice,” said Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet. … [Read more...]

“There is no need to avoid temptation. As you get older, temptation prefers to avoid you,” said the wartime prime minister,” Winston Churchill. … [Read more...]

“The liftoff date for the economy has been forward,” said president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, Richard Fisher. … [Read more...]

“Investing now is like taking a shower while Norman Bates is somewhere in your house,” said Jim McTague, a journalist at Barrons. … [Read more...]

“Freedom of the press is only true if you own a press,” said A.J. Liebling, a famed journalist for the New Yorker. … [Read more...]

“Cream is not the only bovine product that rises to the top in a bull market,” said Roger McNamee, managing director of Elevation Partners. … [Read more...]

“Some in the media have quoted me using a four letter word to dismiss the Correspondents’ dinner as a concern. I have not sought a correction,” said former Secretary of State and presidential contender, Hillary Clinton. … [Read more...]

“Revenues stink in the banking area. This decade will be the worst for revenue growth since the Great Depression,” said Mike Mayo, the controversial banking analyst at the Asian broker and research house, CLSA. … [Read more...]

“Kamikaze missions are rarely successful, least of all for the pilots,” said Robert Gibbs, former White House Press Secretary. … [Read more...]

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock,” said the filmmaker, Orson Wells. … [Read more...]

“For several decades on Wall Street, the short term sensibility has been encouraged and compensated very highly,” said Michael Lewis, author of “The Big Short.” … [Read more...]

“Farce reigns and risk aversion rises,” Kit Juckes, global strategist at Societe Generale SA in London, wrote in a note to clients. “The U.S. is still heading towards a shutdown, the Italian government is heading for a confidence vote that probably precedes elections. Yen up, euro down.” … [Read more...]

“The Fed is not worried about inflation in the next few years and want growth first, growth second, and growth third. With the stabilization of Europe, the apparent pick up in China, and a US economy still on a reasonable footing, the Fed’s heavy leaning to a growth policy should lead to a pretty favorable environment for the markets,” said legendary hedge fund manager, David … [Read more...]

“From the first, Istanbul had given him the impression of a town where, with the night, horror creeps out of the stones. It seemed to him a town the centuries had so drenched in blood and violence that, when daylight went out, the ghosts of its dead were its only population.”  said Ian Fleming in From Russia With Love. … [Read more...]

“I’d much rather have the Wicked Witch of the East go away. We’d be way better off if we ended quantitative easing real fast so this scapegoat can get behind us,” said Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments. … [Read more...]

“This is very bullish for markets. It’s bullish for markets intermediate term. Before, I thought we were in the seventh inning of a four-year bull market. Two waiters just came in and delivered another punch bowl. We’re going into extra innings, baby,” said Stanley Druckenmiller of hedge fund Duquesne Capital Management. … [Read more...]

“The barriers to Wall Street are quite low, once you have the Ivy League credentials. If you’re a certain kind of kid who doesn’t actually know anything about anything, Wall Street is still a great place to go,” said Michael Lewis, author of “The Big Short.” … [Read more...]

“Successful investing is about people agreeing with you….later,” said Jim Grant of Grants Interest Rate Observer. … [Read more...]

“The economy without debt is like major league baseball without steroids,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of BMO Private Bank. … [Read more...]

There are many companies in the US that are running out of time because of leverage. There is still $1 trillion in distressed or defaulted debt. Any company that could refinance has already done so. For all those companies that couldn’t refinance, their going to be hitting a wall this year or next year,” said Marc Lasry, chairman of Avenue Capital Management, a top performing … [Read more...]

“A big part of good investing is to buy uncertainty and sell complacency,” said Robert Luna, CEO of SureVest Capital Management. … [Read more...]

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week,” said the Irish Nobel Prize winning playwright and cofounder of the London School of Economics, George Bernard Shaw. … [Read more...]

There is tremendous amounts of money sitting on the sidelines. There is enormous M&A activity. The greatest thinkers in the corporate world are saying that it is cheaper to buy than to build. This says to me that the stock market still has value in it. We’re a long way from expensive,” said Milton Ezrati senior economist and market strategist for money management giant, … [Read more...]

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the nose,” said former heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson. … [Read more...]

“Something is going to be passed by the congress. The only question is, will it happen before, or after a bond market crisis. There’s no alternative,” said Dr. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve. … [Read more...]

“We have few, if any spare tires left,” said Mohamed El-Erian, CIO of mega bond house PIMCO, about the nail studded road ahead for the US economy. … [Read more...]

“The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain,” said John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group of index funds. … [Read more...]

“In the last 40 years, our record at predicting where we would use military force next is perfect. We’ve never once gotten it right,” said former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. … [Read more...]

“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. … [Read more...]

“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. … [Read more...]

“If the yen goes to ¥150, what does Toyota do to Ford,” said Barry Sternlicht, CEO of the private equity firm, Starwood Capital. … [Read more...]

“I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but never the madness of crowds,” said Sir Isaac Newton, the inventor of calculus and discoverer of Newton’s Laws, who lost his entire fortune in a 17th century investment scam called “the south Sea Bubble.” … [Read more...]

“Japan has gone from Paul Volker to Ben Bernanke overnight,” said legendary hedge fund manager, Stan Druckenmiller. … [Read more...]

“There’s a lot of performance anxiety out there right now. There’s nothing worse than sitting on cash watching a market go up double digits,” said Tom Lee, chief US equity strategist of JP Morgan. … [Read more...]

“The stock market is one of those things that looks better the more expensive it gets,” said Barbara Marcin, portfolio manager of the Gabelli Dividend Growth Fund. … [Read more...]

“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 Reich. … [Read more...]

“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. … [Read more...]

“I’m long, and I hate it,” said Bob Iaccino of Tethys Partners. … [Read more...]

“The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money,” said president James Madison, America’s fourth president. … [Read more...]

“No one is line dancing over the fact that the market is at 1,940. No one feels good about it. The market likes to climb a wall of worry, and the stonemason has been hard at work. So I think we continue to grind higher,” said Jason Trennert, chief investment strategist at Strategas Research Partners. … [Read more...]

“I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton Economic Department where I had responsibility for major policy decisions, such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour,” said the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke. … [Read more...]

“The only reason to be short the stock market now is if you hate money,” said Ben Lichtenstein of tradersaudio.com. … [Read more...]

“Apple is an electric utility now. People don’t want them changing the wall sockets. People will pay them not to change,” said Roger McNamee, cofounder of venture capitalist Elevation Partners. … [Read more...]

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing,” said Helen Keller, a deaf and blind advocate for the disabled. … [Read more...]

“I think this is about Russia reasserting itself on the international stage, basically saying that Russia is back and is a force to be reckoned with. I think we underestimated for a long time the extent of the humiliation that Russians felt after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said former Secretary of Defense and CIA head Robert M. Gates. … [Read more...]

“We live in a century that is too little advanced and too near the infancy of science to see such an art brought in our time to perfection,” said Benjamin Franklin in 1773. … [Read more...]

“Getting information off the internet is akin to trying to sweep back the ocean with a broom,” said Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google. … [Read more...]

“I think the greatest national security threat to the United States at this point is the two square miles in Washington DC that encompasses the Congress and the White House,” said former Secretary of Defense and CIA head Robert M. Gates. … [Read more...]

“Most of the time, stocks are in a zone of reasonableness. I think stocks are reasonable now,” said Oracle of Omaha, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett. … [Read more...]

“The ability to solve age old problems is just over the horizon,” said Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google. … [Read more...]

“The worse things are, the better they will get. When they are truly awful, it is a great time to buy,” said David Tepper, the legendary hedge fund manager at Appaloosa Management LP. … [Read more...]

“I once had to decide how to deploy the most powerful army in history. Now the big decision of the day is whether to eat at Taco Bell or Burger King,” said former Secretary of State, General Colin Powell. … [Read more...]

“The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true,” said humorist and writer, H.L. Mencken. … [Read more...]

“We know what we are, but not what we may be,” said William Shakespeare. … [Read more...]

“Homo Sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission the natural selection, the force that made us,” said E.O. Wilson, a Harvard University biology professor. … [Read more...]

“The further backward you look, the further forward you can see,” said the WWII British prime minister, Winston Churchill. … [Read more...]

Where a calculator on the Eniac is equipped with 18,000 tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes, and weigh 1.5 tons,” said Popular Mechanics magazine in 1949. … [Read more...]

“The future ain’t what it used to be,” said the former New York Yankees baseball manager, Yogi Berra. … [Read more...]

“Go to Heaven for the climate. Go to Hell for the company,” said American humorist, Mark Twain. … [Read more...]

“Most inventions fail because the timing is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing. You have to anticipate and catch the wave just at the right moment,” said computer scientist and futurologist, Ray Kurzweil. … [Read more...]

“The next leg of the bull market is going to have to be a fundamental leg, not a liquidity leg, and investors are in a little bit of a malaise trying to figure that out,” said Anthony Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital. … [Read more...]

“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster,” said the Civil War General, William T. Sherman. … [Read more...]

“Wars are easier to get into than to get out of,” said former Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates. … [Read more...]

“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens,” said the ground breaking British economist, John Maynard Keynes. … [Read more...]

In the 40 years since Vietnam, our record in predicting where we will be militarily engaged next, even six months out, is perfect. We’ve never gotten it right. Not in Grenada, Haiti, Panama, Libya (twice), Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, the Balkans, or Somalia. We need a lot more humility,” said former Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates. … [Read more...]

“We are one budget deal away from being the hot spot of the world. Europe is in the toilet, China’s growth has fallen down, and the Middle East is going backwards. We have a lot of potential for fracking and innovation. If we can prove our nation is governable, we will be the golden spot in the world,” said David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times. … [Read more...]

"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back to the crowd," said David Gurwitz, concert pianist and composer. … [Read more...]

“You will get paid. Throughout history, all smart governments made sure the guys with the guns got paid first,” said former Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates, assuring that soldiers would still receive salaries in the wake of the sequester. … [Read more...]

“Real Estate is the new gold. It is the gold of 2014,” said Jeffrey Gundlach of Doubleline Capital. … [Read more...]

“If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid,” said the ground breaking economist, John Maynard Keynes.   … [Read more...]

“Putin is a man of Russia’s past, haunted by lost empire, lost glory, and lost power. As long has he remains in that office, Russia’s internal problems will not be addressed. Russia’s neighbors will continue to be subject to bullying from Moscow. While the tensions and threats of the cold war will not return, the opportunity to cooperate with the US and Europe will be limited,” … [Read more...]

“How can a government go on, publishing all their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not,” said John Adams, America’s second president, lamenting its tendency to leak like a sieve. … [Read more...]

The F-22 stealth fighter program has had a long slide from its original proposal of 750 aircraft in 1986, to 187 today. Over 25 years, it has suffered almost as many cuts from as many hands as Julius Caesar had,” said former Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates. … [Read more...]

“I suspect no one in the world doubts this administration’s willingness to use force. But we should only use it as a last resort, not as a first step….We don’t do Pearl Harbors,” said former Secretary of Defense and CIA Chief Robert M. Gates. … [Read more...]

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary,” said Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.” … [Read more...]

“You cannot trust bankers to control themselves. They’re like heroin addicts,” said Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman, Charlie Munger. … [Read more...]

“The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain,” said John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group of index funds. … [Read more...]

“Japan has gone from Paul Volker to Ben Bernanke overnight,” said legendary hedge fund manager, Stan Druckenmiller. … [Read more...]

“There’s a lot of performance anxiety out there right now. There’s nothing worse than sitting on cash watching a market go up double digits,” said Tom Lee, chief US equity strategist of JP Morgan. … [Read more...]

“Asking if Hillary Clinton is going to run for president in 2016 is like asking if John Dillinger is going to rob a bank,” said conservative commentator, Mike Murphy. … [Read more...]

“China is still the 800 pound gorilla. Maybe it’s no longer going to grow at 10%, but it’s still going to grow at a faster rate than Europe or the US,” said Edwin Rodriguez Jr., the biggest fianncial advisor in Louisiana, with $2.8 billion in assets. … [Read more...]

“The stock market is one of those things that looks better the more expensive it gets,” said Barbara Marcin, portfolio manager of the Gabelli Dividend Growth Fund. … [Read more...]

“It used to be that the big ate the small. Now it’s the fast that eat the slow,” said business guru, Jason Jennings. … [Read more...]

“The elephant in the room is the upward momentum of the US economy, and it is pretty good,” said Jim Paulson of Wells Capital Management. … [Read more...]

“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Supreme Court justice servicing at the time of the enactment of the tax code in 1913. The slogan is inscribed in huge letters on the face of the IRS headquarters in Washington DC. … [Read more...]

“When a crisis hits, the correlation of everything goes to one,” said Boris Schlossberg, of BK Asset Management. … [Read more...]

“You are going to do really well this year ignoring the noise and thinking about the long term fundamentals,” said Rob Secham of UBS Private Wealth Management. … [Read more...]

“In the last 40 years, our record at predicting where we would use military force next is perfect. We’ve never once gotten it right,” said former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. … [Read more...]