Alex Berenson Quotes
-
Economics pretends to be a science. Its practitioners fill blackboards with equations and clog computers with data. But it is really a faith, or more accurately a set of overlapping and squabbling faiths, each with its own doctrines.
-
Fannie Mae has never publicly disclosed how much money it could lose if interest rates rose 1.5 percentage points in a very short period of time.
-
As a reporter, I embedded for modest stints with American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. When I'm asked about those experiences, I always say - and mean - that we civilians don't deserve the soldiers we have.
-
For chat-room tyros who expect to make their first million day-trading by age 27, paging through the Sunday newspaper with a pair of scissors just to save a couple of cents on Cheetos seems so, well, old economy.
-
Trailer home borrowers, mostly near the bottom of the economic ladder, often default on their loans.
-
Whatever the potential pitfalls, banks are increasingly enthusiastic about venture capital, particularly in new companies with strong prospects in fields like health care and technology.
-
Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.
-
At first glance, Martha Stewart, queen of artfully distressed home furnishings, might not seem to have much in common with Michael R. Milken, one-time king of junk bonds.
-
For a developing country, average long-run growth of 5 percent a year per capita is excellent, and 7 percent is stellar.
-
Most unfortunately, Enron's plunge into bankruptcy court also cost many of its rank-and-file employees their savings.
-
Investors have been too willing to buy stocks with strong reported earnings, even if they do not understand how the earnings are produced.
-
Microeconomics is the study of how specific choices made by businesses, consumers and governments affect the markets for different goods and services. For example, a microeconomist might examine how price changes affect sales of apples relative to oranges.
-
Publicly traded United States companies report sales and profits to investors every quarter.
-
Technology investment drove growth in the 1990s, both directly and by fueling a rising stock market that led to increased consumer spending.
-
The Fed's ability to raise and lower short-term interest rates is its primary control over the economy.
-
Before Jason Bourne, before Jack Ryan, there was Bond, James Bond, the original two-dimensional, world-saving secret agent.
-
Accounting rules give financial institutions flexibility about when they choose to recognize venture capital profits.
-
As they grow, companies saturate their markets, become more complex and difficult to manage, and face larger and more entrenched competitors.
-
In the short run, using militias might be the quickest and easiest way to improve order on Iraq's streets and uproot the terrorists and guerrillas who routinely attack American troops and civilian targets.
-
Sochi started with the same problem as every Winter Olympics. Forget the crass commercialism, the fake amateurism, NBC's refusal to televise important events live to all its viewers. As an event, the Winter Games fail on the most basic level. They're lousy to watch.
-
For investors who do want to speculate in high-yield bonds, one alternative may be a junk bond mutual fund, which can offer investors the relative safety of diversification.
-
Although not well known outside Wall Street, Freddie Mac and its corporate cousin, Fannie Mae, are two of the world's largest financial institutions and play a crucial role in the housing market.
-
In general, investors prefer companies to reward executives for producing recurring income, not one-time gains.
-
The fact that we haven't faced another major terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11 is a very significant achievement, and one that's easy to forget - it's the dog that doesn't bark.