Famous Last Words
“It may be well again to stress the all-important point that the Federal Reserve has it in its power to change interest rates downward any time it sees fit to do so and thus to stimulate business.”
— The Financial World, April 10, 1929
“If a man saves $15 a week and invests in good common stocks, at the end of twenty years he will have at least $80,000 and an income from investments of around $400 a month. He will be rich.”
— John J. Raskob, Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1929
“The energy future is bleak and is likely to grow bleaker in the decade ahead.”
— James Schlesinger, first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, 1979
“The power behind the Japanese juggernaut is much greater than most Americans suspect, and the juggernaut cannot stop of its own volition, for Japan has created a kind of automatic wealth machine, perhaps the first since King Midas.”
— Clyde Prestowitz, Jr., Trading Places (1988)
“A generation from now, Japan will almost certainly have created its own mechanism for advancing technological frontiers in a range of domains… As Japan ascends, America frets about its decline.”
— Laura D'Andrea Tyson, 1989
“At the rate things are going, we are all going to end up working for the Japanese.”
— Lester Thurow, MIT economist, 1989
“The Japanese can buy our buildings, our Wall Street firms, and there's virtually nothing to stop them. In fact, bidding on a building in New York is an act of futility, because the Japanese will pay more than it's worth just to screw us. They want to own Manhattan.”
— Donald Trump, Playboy interview, March 1990
“This book will give you a completely different perspective on stocks. It will tell you what they are really worth - and give you the confidence to buy, hold, and profit from your investments. It will convince you of the single most important fact about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap.”
— James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett, Dow 36,000 (1999)
“You have to throw out all the matrices and formulas and texts that existed before the Web… If we use any of what Graham and Dodd teach us, we wouldn't have a dime under management.”
— Jim Cramer, February 2000
“Tech will roar back. It will continue its merry dash toward infinite powers at zero cost. It will transform all in its path… Bottom line: In such an explosive economy, there will be no safe harbors for traditional 'value' stocks.”
— Rich Karlgaard, Forbes publisher, May 2000
“Unquestionably housing prices are going up quite a bit, but I would note that the fundamentals are very strong – a growing economy, jobs, incomes . . . much of what has happened was supported by the strength of the economy.”
— Ben Bernanke, July 2005
“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will get complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing.”
— Chuck Prince, Citigroup CEO, July 9, 2007
“Even with the sharp drop in its share price, Facebook remains a richly valued bet on the company's ability to wring a lot of revenue from a huge and potentially fickle user base… Stay away from the stock. It could be heading to the mid-teens.”
— Barron’s, September 24, 2012
“The reality is that maybe the word ‘cycle’ is no longer even relevant, given that we have so much unconventional central-bank involvement.”
— Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, J.P. Morgan chief U.S. equity strategist, April 8, 2019
“Monetary policy is set to remain a steadfast support for the U.S. economy, and a backstop that takes the worst-case financial-market outcomes off the table. At the center of that will be Powell, whose term runs until February 2022.”
— Barron’s, November 2, 2020