“The reality is, not every business model is designed for scalability. Some businesses don't necessarily need to scale to be successful. The key lies in intellectual property. Once you've developed a piece of IP, the cost of distributing it to one person versus a million is remarkably similar.”— Theo Paphitis
The quote archive
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
Cyber-threat is the single most serious threat faced by the markets. The United States is very good at cyber warfare and counter warfare, but so are others. This is what we call 'asymmetric' warfare where adversaries have been able to level the playing field.
— James RickardsCurrency expert & author on financial threats to national security
We make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same…
— Carlos CastanedaAuthor of "The Teachings of Don Juan" & Controversial Anthropologist
The awareness of life as being finite allows them (somewhat counter-intuitively) to live… This doesn't necessarily mean being reckless, but rather that they engage in activities which are positive for their well-being- things like travel, education, spending time with family and friends, and so on.
— Not specifiedPeople underestimate their personal probability of encountering negative …it is not so much that individuals believe that negative events will not happen, but rather that these events are relatively unlikely to happen to them.
— Frank McKennaFormer Premier of New Brunswick & Canadian diplomat and businessman
When you have high levels of indebtedness and big deficits… if you simply impose fiscal austerity, you may not be able to achieve your targets because GDP will begin to contract and that will place much greater pressures on the fiscal side.
— Larry HathewayThe monetary union was flawed from inception. It included, under the framework of a single currency and a single monetary policy, countries that were likely to have very divergent outcomes and therefore would prefer to see different exchange rates, interest rates, and monetary policy responses.
— Larry HathewayFiscal austerity is the primary focus of policy in terms of response. That is both a misdiagnosis and compounds the problem.
— Larry HathewayThe single greatest deficit that Europe faces today is not a budget, current-account or trade deficit… but a growth one. With stronger growth, a lot of these problems would be quite a bit easier to handle, if not to resolve.
— Larry HathewayPoverty is a result of history first of all. Mankind was always 'poor' according to our development standards. Growth has been very high in the last two centuries, but only in the west for a while, and now
— Jacques AttaliFrench Economist, Advisor to Mitterrand & Founder of EBRD
As you move forward... there is the potential that the government can make a wrong-move but more importantly, now that the infrastructure has been built.. you have to question how long that growth model can last... Once you've built your motorways and railways, you're not going to build anymore!
— Louis-Vincent GaveFounder of Gavekal Research & Investment Strategist
Chinese global trade went down 20% and Chinese exports collapsed by 25%. This had an immediate effect whereby factories along the coast, in the last quarter of 2008 alone, fired between 20-30 million migrant workers.
— Louis-Vincent GaveFounder of Gavekal Research & Investment Strategist
What if we move to a world where, because robots are so cheap... cheap labour doesn't really matter anymore? What will be China's main comparative advantage after that?
— Louis-Vincent GaveFounder of Gavekal Research & Investment Strategist
One way to think about reserve currencies is to liken them to an operating system for a computer. Today, everybody is on Microsoft... but nobody changes... why? because everybody else is on Microsoft and if you want to exchange files and work together, you have to be on the same platform.
— Louis-Vincent GaveFounder of Gavekal Research & Investment Strategist
We have to acknowledge that the global economic recovery that we started to see in 2009 was the first economic cycle since World War II that was not led by the US, but by China.
— Louis-Vincent GaveFounder of Gavekal Research & Investment Strategist
The net result would certainly be worth the effort as now, more than ever, stakeholders in a fragile global economy from central banks to individual consumers need to know that what they are seeing is, in fact, the truth... the whole truth... and nothing but the truth.
— UnknownAround the world, government economists have a paradoxical role. On one hand they have a clear remit to accurately quantify their nation's economy and publish those figures in good faith... but conversely they can be prone (through pressure) to 'engineer' the figures in order to meet political objectives.
— Unknown