Almost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians.

If an asset has cash flow or the likelihood of cash flow in the near term and is not purely dependment on what a future buyer might pay, then it's an investment. If an asset's value is totally dependent on the amount a future buyer might pay, then its purchase is speculation.

I don't have a Bloomberg on my desk. I don't care.

Do not accept principal risk while investing short-term cash: the greedy effort to earn a few extra basis points of yield inevitably leads to the incurrence of greater risk, which increases the likelihood of losses and severe illiquidity at precisely the moment when cash is needed to cover expenses, to meet commitments, or to make compelling long-term investments.

It's incredibly important to note that when you don't allow failure, you get more failure.

Warren Buffett likes to say that the first rule of investing is "Don't lose money," and the second rule is, "Never forget the first rule." I too believe that avoiding loss should be the primary goal of every investor. This does not mean that investors should never incur the risk of any loss at all. Rather "don't lose money" means that over several years an investment portfolio should not be exposed to appreciable loss of principal.

Wall Street can be a dangerous place for investors. You have no choice but to do business there, but you must always be on your guard. The standard behavior of Wall Streeters is to pursue maximization of self-interest; the orientation is usually short term. This must be acknowledged, accepted, and dealt with. If you transact business with Wall Street with these caveats in mind, you can prosper. If you depend on Wall Street to help you, investment success may remain elusive.