[C]apitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich.

It is an axiom nowadays that no bank fails for lack of capital unprofitable lending is always the underlying cause.

Progress is cumulative in science and engineering, but cyclical in finance.

Central banks have gotten out of the central banking business and into the central planning business, meaning that they are devoted to raising up-if they can-economic growth and employment through the dubious means of suppressing interest rates and printing money. The nice thing about gold is that you can't print it.

Every debt is ultimately paid, if not by the debtor, then eventually by the creditor.

Nothing beats a little cash in a bear market, of course, and the oldest form of cash is gold.

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

Hope sustains life, but misplaced hope prolongs recessions.

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

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