It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes.

A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.

I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting.

Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.

Of course I'm troubled by huge consumer debt levels - we've pushed consumer credit very hard in the US. Eventually, if it keeps growing, it will stop growing. As Herb Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." When it stops, it may be unpleasant. Other than Herb Stein's quote, I have no comment. But the things that trouble you are troubling me.

If you buy something because it's undervalued, then you have to think about selling it when it approaches your calculation of its intrinsic value. That's hard. But if you buy a few great companies, then you can sit on your ass. That's a good thing.

It's stupid the way people extrapolate the past -- and not slightly stupid, but massively stupid.