“Perhaps no other man ever elected to the presidency wanted it less than our 20th. He said himself, ‘This honor comes to me unsought. I have never had the Presidential fever, not even for a day.'”
http://fee.org/blog/detail/a-president-who-didnt-want-the-job
“Economists gain jobs, fame and prestige by claiming to improve the workings of free markets. We see that their theories have clearly worked for them. They have improved their own position… and shifted trillions of dollars to their cronies in the financial industry. But is there a clear, undisputed example in which they have worked for anyone else? Again, none that we know of. But there are plenty of examples of economies that have been severely damaged by overly ambitious central planners.”
http://bonnerandpartners.com/crash-course-money-part-iii/
“If you know a 26-year-old who can get out of the market before the financial industry collapses again, first of all, she’s very smart. I want to meet her. I’d say to her, you better start reading a lot of history next year to temper your enthusiasm. The same result is coming again. Secondly, she should definitely know another language. Finally, she should definitely, if she likes the outdoors, farming or planting, consider agriculture. We’ve had many periods in world history when the financial types have been the center of the universe and many periods when the people who produce real goods are the center of the universe. Well, that’s coming again.”
“Most people don’t realize that the central banks of Belgium, Japan, Greece, Switzerland, and South Africa are all publicly-traded. In times past, central clearinghouses were typically privately-owned while the issuance of bank-notes was the domain of competing banks. The fact that a few central banks still retain traces of their former private nature is a good reminder that centralized banking isn’t necessarily the domain of the public sector. Though the shareholders of the five central banks may to some extent ‘own’ their nation’s central bank, they don’t exercise the same degree of control over their company that regular shareholders do.”
http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2013/02/central-banks-that-trade-on-stock-market.html
“Since the financial crisis of 2008 stock prices have only risen when the Fed is either expanding its balance sheet, hinting that it will soon do so, or actively recycling assets to hold down long term interest rates. Absent any of these aggressive moves, stocks have shown a clear tendency to fall. Curiously, while most investors now believe that QE is in the past, and that the Fed will not even be hinting at a restart, few would argue that the current bull market is in danger. But a quick look at how much influence the Fed’s operations have had on market performance should send a chill down Wall Street.”
http://www.europac.net/research_analysis/newsletters/global_investor_newsletter_fall_2014
“Is the War on Drugs doing more harm than good? In a bold talk, drug policy reformist Ethan Nadelmann makes an impassioned plea to end the “backward, heartless, disastrous” movement to stamp out the drug trade. He gives two big reasons we should focus on intelligent regulation instead.”
“The market has re-established overvalued, overbought, overbullish conditions that mirror some of the most precarious points in the historical record such as 1929, 1937, 1974, 1987, 2000 and 2007. That syndrome is now coupled with continued evidence of a subtle shift toward more risk-averse investor psychology, primarily reflected by internal dispersion and widening credit spreads. [..] We’ll continue to respond as the evidence changes, but under current conditions, we view the investment environment for stocks as being among a handful of the most hostile points in history.”
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc141110.htm
“The narrative of overvalued carry trades ending in collapse is one that winds through all of financial history in countries around the globe. Yet the pattern repeats because the allure of ‘reaching for yield’ is so strong. To reach for yield, regardless of price or value, is a form of myopia that not only equates yield with total return, but eventually demands the sudden and magical appearance of a crowd of greater fools in order to exit successfully. The mortgage bubble was fundamentally one enormous carry trade focused on mortgage backed securities. Currency crises around the world generally have a similar origin. At present, the high-yield debt markets and equity markets around the world are no different.”
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc141103.htm
“You have been born into a time when you can communicate with thousands of people in an instant, people who share your interests and concerns. You can leave town for the weekend and see things daily that your ancestors could not possibly have imagined. Your job is almost certainly less physically taxing than any job any person who lived prior ever had. Statistically, you are likely to live longer and better than anyone born before you. Entrepreneurs are busy creating and popularizing some of the first tools in history that are more useful for undermining coercion than for furthering it. Freedom is expanding daily in ways our predecessors could hardly have dreamed.”
http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/live-like-youre-free
“You have been born into a time when you can communicate with thousands of people like you instantly at any time. You can leave town for the weekend and see things daily that your ancestors could not possibly have imagined. Your job is almost certainly less physically taxing than any job any of your parents, grandparents, or virtually any person who lived prior to them ever had. Statistically, you’re going to live longer and better than anyone born more than a few years before you. Entrepreneurs are busy creating and popularizing some of the first tools in history that are more useful for undermining coercion than for furthering it. You are the 0.00001%. Live like it.”
https://building.liberty.me/2014/10/10/feeling-down/
