?Never again will the dollar be held hostage in the hands of speculators,? said President Richard Nixon when he took the US off the gold standard in 1971. The Dow Average posted its largest point gain in history the next day.
?The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain,? said John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group of index funds.
?We cannot continue to run trillion dollar deficits and remain a powerful nation,? said Leon Panetta, the former Director of the CIA
?People are investing with a rear view mirror. Last year, you had people legitimately scared out of the market. Unfortunately, you are losing a generation of investors at a time when they ought to be thinking about buying high quality stocks,? said Hersh Cohen of Clearbridge Advisors.
?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 Reich.
?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.
?If the yen goes to ?150, what does Toyota do to Ford,? said Barry Sternlicht, CEO of the private equity firm, Starwood Capital.
?At some point in 2013, knuckles are going to be turning white, and we?ll see whatever rabbits Ben Bernanke is going to have to pull out of his hat?, said David Rosenberg of Gluskin, Sheff in Associates
