JUST CROSS OUT 'HOBOS' AND SCRIBBLE IN 'THE JOB-CHALLENGED'
"I don't actually think this crisis requires a lot of new economics. You read John Maynard Keynes' The Great Slump of 1930 and change a few words and it sounds like 2008 and 2009."
- Princeton University economist/New York Times columnist Paul Krugman tells the American Economic Association's annual meeting in Atlanta that we aren't in whole new economic ballgame - economists simply took their eyes off the ball.
AND THE OTHER FOUR NODDED APPROVINGLY...
"If five of us agree on something, by definition we're going to be wrong."
- Toronto-Dominion Bank chief economist Don Drummond tells the audience at the Economic Club of Canada's annual outlook event that when it comes to economic forecasting, too much consensus can be a dangerous thing.
MAKE MY INFAMY WORK FOR YOU!
"The market is always in need of my trading and fund-raising abilities. I will make efforts to let the world know, love, and need my abilities. My current popularity and the media's focus on me greatly add to the possibility of my resurrection to success once more."
- In a recent blog entry on his investment firm's website, alleged $30-million Ponzi-schemer Weizhen Tang explains how his rising public profile will help him win back his investors' lost money. That was before Mr. Tang, who faces fraud charges, disappeared this week - prompting Toronto police to issue an arrest warrant for the self-proclaimed "Chinese Warren Buffett."
AS FOR THE REAL WARREN BUFFETT …
"A shareholder voting 'yes' today is authorizing a huge transaction without knowing its cost or the means of payment. What we know with certainty, however, is that Kraft stock, at its current price of $27, is a very expensive 'currency' to be used in an acquisition."
- Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Warren Buffett's holding company and the largest shareholder in Kraft Foods Inc., explains why it voted against Kraft's hostile $16-billion (U.S.) cash-and-stock bid to acquire Cadbury PLC.
THANKS FOR INVENTING DEMOCRACY. NOW GET LOST
"The markets are deluding themselves when they think at a certain point the other member states will put their hands on their wallets to save Greece."
- European Central Bank executive board member Juergen Stark warned investors to drop the notion that the EU will bail out seriously debt-laden member country Greece.
David Parkinson