Keys To The Kingdom

He who is able to fix the public utilities holds the keys to the kingdom in terms of winning the support of the Iraqi people and ultimately ending this conflict.

-- Army Sgt. Alex J. Plitsas, on conditions in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, New York Times, 22 April 2008

Stand Up

This vote shows that the Iraqis have figured out how to stand up for themselves, to Iran and to the U.S.

-- Michael O'Hanlon, specialist in Iraq at the Brookings Institution, on the Iraqi cabinet's approval of a security agreement calling for a full withdrawal of American forces by the end of 2011, New York Times, 17 November 2008

Grieving

People are grieving. There was a death. Their money died.

-- Barbara Goldsmith, semiretired psychotherapist in Delray Beach, Florida, New York Times, 13 November 2008

Cure Every Ill

Congress seems to want to cure every ill known to man except unconstitutional government and high taxes.

-- Charley Reese (1937-), American syndicated columnist

Graffito

Seen November 5 On a Handmade Sign in West Philly

Rosa had to sit so Martin could walk,
Martin had to walk so Barack could run,
Barack had to run so our children can fly.

-- Scott Paul, in The Washington Note blog

RIP Studs Terkel

My epitaph, I hope, will be, "Curiosity did not kill this cat."

-- Louis "Studs" Terkel (16 May 1912 - 31 October 2008), American author, historian, radio personality, and actor, 1999 National Public Radio interview

RIP Michael Crichton

We are all assumed, these days, to reside at one extreme of the opinion spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro-big government. We are feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world, few of us hold these extreme views. There is instead a spectrum of opinion.

-- Dr. John Michael Crichton (23 October 1942 - 4 November 2008), American author, film & TV producer, "Mediasaurus: The decline of conventional media" - Speech at the National Press Club, Washington D.C. (7 April 1993)

Obama Victorious

This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change.

-- President-elect Barack Obama, in his victory speech, 4 November 2008


Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.

-- Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain, concession speech, 4 November 2008


No matter how they cast their ballot, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday,

-- Out-going president George W. Bush, regarding Obama's victory, 5 November 2008

--

In Piatt County, IL where I live, McCain won with 4988 votes (55%) to Obama's 3856 votes (43%).

In Champaign County, IL where I work, Obama won with 48,351 votes (58%) to McCain's 33,748 votes (40%).

Of the 8 times that I have voted in a presidential election, this marks just the second time that the candidate I voted for has won. No wonder I'm a cynic about national politics.

Rock The Vote

Rock the vote, people!

Don't Have To Think

The whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time.

-- Homer Simpson

People Might Remember

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

-- Eugene McCarthy (1916 - 2005) American politician, poet, and 22-year member of the US Congress (D-MN)

Politician Vs. Statesman

A politician is a man who thinks of the next election; while the statesman thinks of the next generation.

-- James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), preacher and author

Guide Your Luck

It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck, even while waiting for it.

-- Baltasar Gracian (1601 - 1658), Spanish Baroque prose writer

Informed Voters

I don't think anything will change until Americans revolt and get it into their heads that they need to be informed voters instead of just listening to the paid political ads.

-- Deborah Pryce, a United States representative from Ohio who is retiring, New York Times, 30 October 2007

Distorted

... The problem with the U.S. economy, more than lack of regulation, has been government's failure to control systemic risks that government itself helped to create. We are not witnessing a crisis of the free market but a crisis of distorted markets.

-- Washington Post editorial, 20 October 2008

Lahde Duh

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reined in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it.

With that I say goodbye and good luck.

All the best,
Andrew Lahde

-- Andrew Lahde of Lahde Capital Management, farewell letter (abridged) on his retirement (age ~38) after his fund earned 866% return in 2007 betting on the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry, Financial Times, 17 October 2008

Orthodoxy

As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he'd be quite good at it. But I think we need a generational change.

-- Colin L. Powell, discussing Senator John McCain, and endorsing Senator Barack Obama, New York Times, 20 October 2008

Duly Rise

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.

-- Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

Cinderella At The Ball

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities -- that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future -- will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.

-- Warren Edward Buffett (30 August 1930-), American investor, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshire Hathaway 2000 Chairman's Letter

Market Boom

... [Yesterday's 7+%] declines [in the Dow and Standard & Poor's 500] came on the one-year anniversary of the closing highs of the Dow and the S&P. The Dow has lost 5,585 points, or 39.4 percent, since closing at 14,198 on Oct. 9, 2007. The S&P 500, meanwhile, is off 655 points, or 41.9 percent, since recording its high of 1,565.15.

U.S. stock market paper losses totaled $872 billion Thursday and the value of shares overall has tumbled a stunning $8.33 trillion since last year's high. That's based on preliminary figures measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 U.S.-based companies' stocks and represents almost all stocks traded in America.

[snip]

From Yahoo News


... and then there's today ....

Artificial Boom

True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late.

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) Austrian economist

Knife Fight

At the end of the day, campaigns are campaigns. In the last five days, it always comes down to a knife fight in a telephone booth.

-- Chris Lehane, Democratic political consultant, New York Times, 7 October 2008

Puppet

It was them saying, "We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you."

-- Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News military analyst, on a Pentagon effort to influence news coverage, New York Times, 20 April 2008

Nothing Is Illegal

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

-- Andrew Young, author, civil rights activist, US congressman, mayor, and UN ambassador (b. 1932)

Bad Horsemen

Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can't bother about where they're going.

-- Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), Austrian-American economist

Corporation

Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

-- Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914) "The Devil's Dictionary"

Casino Capitalism

This crisis underlines the excesses and uncertainties of a casino capitalism that has only one logic - lining your pockets. It also shows the bankruptcy of "law of the jungle" capitalism that no longer invests in companies and job creation, but instead makes money out of money in a totally uncontrolled way.

-- German lawmaker Martin Schulz, chairman of the Socialists in the EU assembly, September 2008

T-Shirts

When considering what a police state might look like, I never imagined it would include commemorative t-shirts.

-- Commentor "izz" at RawStory.com, regarding a story on T-shirts produced by Denver's police union -- "We get up early, to beat the crowds," the shirt reads, followed by "2008 DNC." The words flank a grinning police officer holding a baton and wearing a hat with a crossed-out number "68," presumably making reference to activist organization Recreate 68, which staged several anti-war demonstrations during the convention.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Denver_cops_get_Tshirts_that_mock_0928.html

The Other Attitude

I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

-- Paul Leonard Newman (1925-01-26 - 2008-09-26), American actor and film director, founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all profits and royalties to charity, in "Paul Newman's Road To Glory", interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly, 1 July 2002

Innovative Products

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

-- Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain in the September/October 2008 issue of "Contingencies", the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries

Review NOT

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

-- From the draft bill authorizing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to spend ~$700,000,000,000 in tax money to purchase toxic debt from ailing financial institutions

Ghosts

The new stadium is beautiful, but I don't know if the ghosts are going to be there. You can feel that, standing here -- Babe Ruth, DiMaggio. It's not going to be the same.

-- Alex Alicea, Yankees fan from Union City, NJ, on the last game played at Yankee Stadium, New York Times, 22 September 2008

Savor It

The truth is, I'm still not fully conscious of what I have achieved. Perhaps with the passage of time, I'll be able to savor it.

-- Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, on winning the 2008 Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain), rounding out his record 15-month sweep of the three Grand Tours, the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, and Vuelta a Espana

Old Fashioned

We make money the old fashioned way. We print it.

-- Art Rolnick, former Chief Economist, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank

Insulting

She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything. ... I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States. I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, "I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia." That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.

-- Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel on Republican vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, Omaha World-Herald, 18 September 2008

Constitution Day

The disdain and uncooperative nature that this administration has shown toward Congress is so egregious that I can no longer assume that it is simply bureaucratic incompetence or isolated mistakes. Rather, I have come to the sad conclusion that this administration has intentionally obstructed Congress' rightful and constitutional duties.

This administration is setting a terrible precedent. What people have to understand is when there is a liberal Democrat in the White House, the President will have set [the precedent] that Members of Congress can simply be dismissed, and that when they are trying to do a congressional investigation need not be cooperated with, in fact, can be obstructed. Is that the type of President that we want? Is that acceptable? It shouldn't be acceptable to Democrats and it shouldn't be acceptable to Republicans.

It is truly with a heavy heart, Madam Speaker, that I stand here reciting example after example of the maliciousness and condescending attitude exhibited by this administration. It is a problem that's flowing from the top. When I hear my friends on the other side of the aisle accusing this administration of stonewalling, of coverups, or thwarting investigations, I sadly must concur with them.

-- Representative Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), 26 February 2008


Happy Constitution Day, September 17, the day the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787.

Big Hand

The ocean rose up like a big hand and just went right through our house.

-- Deeann Sherman, who was trapped on Bolivar Peninsula in Texas by Hurricane Ike, New York Times, 16 September 2008

Musical Chairs

Investors are like hyperactive first graders playing musical chairs.

-- Sam Stovall, of Standard & Poor's Equity Research, on a downward spiral affecting the shares of financial companies, New York Times, 14 September 2008

LHC Day 1

Don't cross the streams.

-- Harold Ramis as Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters, 1984

--

You can think of each experiment as a giant digital camera with around 150 million pixels taking snapshots 600 million times a second.

-- CERN's Ian Bird, who leads the LHC Grid project, a network of 60,000 computers to analyze what happens when protons are hurled at each other

--

If you can read this, then the Large Hadron Collider did not create any earth-consuming black holes today.

Likely Very Expensive

Today's necessary but likely very expensive action for taxpayers is the consequence of regulatory neglect and of a broader political system's reluctance to take on what should have been clearly seen as festering problems.

-- Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, on the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, New York Times, 8 Septem