'Excessive regulation in the banking reform bill will destroy a substantial part of our bond-distributing machinery. Can anyone expect that a step of this kind will improve the quality of our long-term investments?'

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.

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

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. The Boskin Commission... was an act of cowardice. Rather than man up and say fix this, its broken, we can't afford it.

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

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

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.