“Salesmen always need something to sell.”

Keynes vs Hayek? Friedman vs Krugman? Those are the wrong intellectual debates. Its you vs. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, You vs. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO. And you are losing…

This ugly duckling investment will likely need time – quarters, or even years – to blossom into a beautiful swan.

For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation.

Returnless risk is not how you prepare for a decent retirement.

Unlike cheap stocks, inexpensive asset classes have a lower chance of big drawdowns (broad asset classes don’t go to zero) and a higher probability of average or better returns.

I find it funny that people who didn’t think there was any inflation in the pipeline are now talking about stagflation.

Rather than engage in the sort of selective retention that so many investors tend to do and pretend mistakes never happened, I prefer to own them. This allows me to learn from them and, with any luck, avoid making the same errors again.

The market is going to love it. The market always seems to applaud major mergers, even though the vast majority of them don’t work out and don’t increase shareholder value.

One thing I detest most about the financial press is the lack of accountability. All sorts of nonsense is said without penalty.

If I am going to trash others for their dumb predictions, I must at least hold myself to the same sort of accountability.

History is replete with examples of tech firms that were marginalized by new companies and technologies.

And any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

Excessive regulation in the banking reform bill will destroy a substantial part of our bond-distributing machinery.

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.

Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple.

You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up seven is still a function of random luck.

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naive or a salesman.

Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.

However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman.

He didn’t have a career as such; he was a printing salesman essentially for most of his working life.

My dad didn’t graduate from high school, ended up being a printing salesman, probably never made more than $8,000 a year.

My dad never graduated high school. He was a printing salesman.