Growth at an exceptional rate is a red flag in banking. It is hard enough to manage an ordinary bank; to control a sprouting weed is well-nigh impossible. If loans are expanding too quickly, the lending officers have probably been saying 'yes' too frequently.

I believe that there is an important kernel of truth in the idea that financial errors recur every other generation.

In general, markets know more than the people who write about them.

To me the gold price takes the form of a very uncomplicated formula, and all you have to do is divide one by 'n.' And 'n', I'm glad you ask, 'n' is the world's trust in the institution of paper money and in the capacity of people like Ben Bernanke to manage it. So the smaller 'n', the bigger the price. One divided by a receding number is the definition of a bull market.

[T]he first bad bank loan was no doubt made around the time of the opening of the first bank.

In almost every walk of life, people buy more at lower prices; in the stock market they seem to buy more at higher prices.

The Fed can change how things look, not how things are