Wisdom in fragments

Travel is a market that will always do well, in the absence of one of two factors. Firstly… if the global economy goes soft- since travel is a discretionary spend- it will go soft faster than the rest of the economy. Secondly… if there is ever an event that cause travel to be inhibited it has a ripple-out effect.

inspires because it has a huge emotional component, everybody feels very attached to it. At the same time, it's incredibly complex- and full of mind-bogglingly stupid things that make it more complex than it needs to be

since citizens' militias are anachronistic, gun owners now use the second amendment merely to defend individual gun ownership, as if that somehow offers protection against tyranny. A reckless, right-wing Supreme Court has agreed with them. As a result, gun ownership has become perversely linked to freedom in the vast gun-owning American sub-culture. But, instead of protection of freedom, Americans nowadays are getting massive bloodshed and fear….

Leading economist specializing in sustainable development and poverty reduction

we even regulate toy guns, by requiring orange tips — but lawmakers don't have the gumption to stand up to National Rifle Association extremists and regulate real guns as carefully as we do toys….

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist & New York Times Columnist

more Americans died in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined…

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist & New York Times Columnist

as a nation, …we're meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we're doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?… if we're honest with ourselves, the answer's no. We're not doing enough. And we will have to change…

44th President of the United States (2009-2017)

I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody…

Political Strategist & Democratic Campaign Consultant, "The Ragin' Cajun

We estimate that between 2010 and 2015, there will be 150million new Chinese entering the middle-class. That's a middle-class which increasingly buys diamonds as a gift of love and as a memento of stature.

As I said earlier, the only source of value in our business is the consumer's desire for the product. That desire is built on emotions ascribed to diamonds, and if they believe the way that diamond has been brought to their finger does anything other than live up to the values they ascribe to it, we would have a major problem.

All the market research we have done shows that consumers use diamonds to mark special moments in their lives because they are timeless, have been in the ground 3 billion years and are unique. For all of those reasons, when you ask a consumer, particularly a woman, if they would be happy to have a synthetic diamond engagement ring? the answer is no…

More than just being a luxury item, they are pieces that represent milestone moments- that's why they're important. People also reflect on whether diamonds are a hard asset class. They are the hardest of all assets, being the hardest asset known to man!

The truth is nobody needs a diamond. You don't need a diamond to heat your home, run your car or power your cell-phone. As a business, it's clear to us that there is only one source of value for diamonds- and that is the consumer's desire for the product. 99% of diamond demand is from the jewellery industry, less than 1% goes to industrial uses.

The easiest piece of advice to give, but the hardest to follow- is to not let yourself get swept up in the next bubble. You could have said that about tech stocks in the 90's, housing prices around the world in the early 2000's… but people always got swept up in them. The history of financial bubbles does not give cause for optimism.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board

If you mean magnitude of crisis in the literal sense of comparing it against the one which occurred? I think it's very, very unlikely. This was the hundred-year flood. If you stopped before that phrase and just asked whether we would face another crisis in the financial markets within our generation? Then I'd bet the ranch on that. Markets have an incredible capacity to forget.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board

The government turned a profit on the financial market aspects of TARP- a profit! One of the many sad legacies about this episode is the bad name given to fiscal stimulus and TARP. You can't even use those terms in the United States any more without thinking of a euphemism. People still think these measures cost American taxpayers a huge amount of money and did no good. The facts are exactly the reverse.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board

There's a disease shared between individuals who consider themselves the smartest people in the room that makes them think they'll be the ones that get out just in time, while others are left holding the bag. That was true for a few people, but in general… someone will always be left holding the bag.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board