Economics

When politicians refer to 'our nation's best interest' they must realise our economy is globalised.. this means that their nation's best interest is inextricably linked to the best interest of their neighbours- and nations further afield.

I've been doing this a long time and have very rarely seen a company with sustainable competitive advantage like Amazon has.

The principal problem with Groupon, in my opinion, is that they have a bad business model. It basically eats by selling their customers crack cocaine- telling them to cut their prices 50% for a selected number of people. If you do that enough? You wont have a business.

I think Apple is preposterously undervalued. Apple has this mind-boggling margin structure, phenomenal consumer brand, and is accumulating mountains of cash. I joked on television that they should lever up and buy Greece! They have something like 7x cash-flow.

If you look historically at the historical contours of wealth- it's primarily created through private ownership. That's always been the case- and I believe it always be.

These individuals are looking for a global liquid multi-asset portfolio that is highly correlated around risk management strategies. They don't want you taking risk! they're going to do that.. and they can do it better than you can because they're now worth hundreds of millions or billions!

The Chinese government has realised that to fuel capitalism, an atheistic, communistic, civil-religion will never propel growth. They realise that their system, frankly, will not support the growth or creativity to create the new technologies and companies that are necessary.

In all the politics that's going on… everyone says that small business are the driver for growth. The truth is, it's not just small businesses… it's NEW businesses. They are the ones that consume the largest number of jobs in an economy and lead to economic growth.

Hedge funds give less transparency than almost anything that people invest money in... Since investors have accepted much less transparency and much less attractive terms in liquidity and information rights, they have not been able to pick apart the sources of return.

It's amusing when you ask people, well name someone who became rich as a hedge fund client?

Small hedge funds do better than big ones... big hedge funds did better when they were small... therefore the industry did better when it was small... That third step in the logic is something that investors don't spend a lot of time thinking about because there's nobody around to point that out to them!

If all the money that's ever been invested in hedge funds had been put in treasury bills instead, the results would have been twice as good.

Since 1998, the effective return to hedge-fund clients has only been 2.1% a year... never in the history of Finance was so much paid by so many for so little.

What is obvious is that the first reason people use drugs is that they're there. You can't use drugs unless they're there, and they're cheap for your pocket or for the fruits of your stealing! For that reason, we need to get a deeper understanding of the fundamental question of why drugs are available on our streets.

Pioneer of addiction medicine and alcohol dependence research; founded modern addiction psychiatry

There's a very strong relationship between depravation and drug use in many western cultures. It's not the sole reason- you do get the rich and mega-privileged using drugs… You can't go shouting from the rooftops that it's all about depravation… a lot of it is… but there are other social factors, personal factors, genetic factors and economic factors – all mixed into the pot.

Pioneer of addiction medicine and alcohol dependence research; founded modern addiction psychiatry

Think of 'branding' as burning in a name on an animal such as a cow so that the cow's owner would be known. This protects the owner in the event that the animal is stolen. But we can use the name 'branding' whenever anyone affixes their name to something that is available for sale.

Father of Modern Marketing & Prolific Management Author