The 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 Hatheway“I'm 65 years old, and one of the things that amazes me is the number of people who work to get to a certain level of success in showbusiness, and then quit to go play golf?! There is nothing else I would want to do in this world.”— Penn Jillette
Magician, Illusionist & Half of Penn & Teller Duo
The quote archive
Wisdom in fragments
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
Poverty 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.
— UnknownWe weren't involved in politics and had nothing to do with the government. But they took everything we had, our seven companies and the company plane. And it's a miracle they didn't kill us.
— Argentine businessmanManaging a hedge fund as a value-investor is a dream come true!
— Lauren TempletonValue investor and niece of legendary investor John Templeton
We will not employ capital unless we can find an opportunity that has a minimum of 50% upside to our intrinsic value over the term of our investment.
— Lauren TempletonValue investor and niece of legendary investor John Templeton
The point of maximum pessimism is the ultimate time to buy a stock because at this point, all the sellers are gone… and only buyers remain. How do you determine this point? Even Uncle John said it's impossible…. You never know until it has passed!
— Lauren TempletonValue investor and niece of legendary investor John Templeton
Uncle John always had a desk-plate in his office that said 'trouble is opportunity' and that's very much how we see the markets.
— Lauren TempletonValue investor and niece of legendary investor John Templeton
We tend to see two scenarios that come up time and time again. The first and most common scenario is that security prices become inefficient or show large departures from intrinsic value when there are few investors paying attention to the company. So in this case, we are talking about a neglected stock.
— Lauren TempletonValue investor and niece of legendary investor John Templeton
Corruption can be seen as denigration of the basic right of people to dignity. It is also a threat to human security and human rights.
— Yury FedotovDirector of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime