We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.

'F.A.S.B' ... 'Financial Accounts Still Bogus'.

If you have the opportunities of Berkshire, an investment in gold is dumb.

Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.

I think there's an awful lot of twaddle and bullshit on EVA. The whole game is to turn retained earnings into more earnings. EVA has ideas about cost of capital that make no sense. Of course, if a company generates high returns on capital and can maintain this over time, it will do well. But the mental system as a whole does not work.

Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view.

The beauty of a financial institution is that there are a lot of ways to go to hell in a bucket. You can push credit too far, do a dumb acquisition, leverage yourself excessively - it's not just derivatives [that can bring about your downfall].