A Quote by Warren Buffett

People do, as long as you have markets, you'll have excesses. — © Warren Buffett
People do, as long as you have markets, you'll have excesses.
As long as you have markets, you'll have excesses. People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started. I mean, you know, you're not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter.
When excesses such as lax lending standards become widespread and persist for some time, people are lulled into a false sense of security, creating an even more dangerous situation. In some cases, excesses migrate beyond regional or national borders, raising the ante for investors and governments. These excesses will eventually end, triggering a crisis at least in proportion to the degree of the excesses. Correlations between asset classes may be surprisingly high when leverage rapidly unwinds.
Well, as you know, we're working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now, as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.
Markets are a social construction, they're made from institutions. We in a democratic society create markets, we constitute markets, we bring them into existence, and we shouldn't turn markets over to a narrow group of people who regulate them and run them in their interests, rather they should be run democratically for the common good.
But in the financial markets, without proper institutional rules, there's the law of the jungle - because there's greed! There's nothing wrong with greed, per se. It's not that people are more greedy now than they were 20 years ago. But greed has to be tempered, first, by fear of losses. So if you bail people out, there's less fear. And second, b prudential regulation and supervision to avoid certain excesses.
I think people are complacent. But complacency is like any other metric. It's easy to measure where it is, but it's hard to tell how persistent it is. What causes really big bear markets is not just when people are overly complacent - it's when that complacency is sticky. As long as the skepticism can refresh itself, I think that the markets are still quite viable.
In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view.
Our inspired Constitution is wisely designed to protect from excesses of political power, but it can do little to protect us from the excesses of appetite or from individual indifference to great principles or institutions. Any significant unraveling of the moral fiber of the American people, therefore, finally imperils the Constitution.
Bubbles are best identified by credit excesses, not valuation excesses. And there's no bigger credit excess than in China.
A lot of people in the USA probably don't understand how important they are to the mortgage markets. And it's really important for people to have confidence in the mortgage markets and that there be stability in the mortgage markets.
To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints on active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simpily an all-pervasive system.
Markets can't think about anything beyond about three months. This is very long-term for markets, which is why the important things in life have got to be taken outside of the marketplace.
Markets cant think about anything beyond about three months. This is very long-term for markets, which is why the important things in life have got to be taken outside of the marketplace.
I don't want to drive the markets crazy. I don't want to create trouble, but rather order and rules and norms. We have to struggle against financial excesses, those who speculate with sovereign debt, those who develop financial products which have done so much harm.
If we make all of the people good, markets will be good. If markets are bad, which they are, that means people are bad, which they are. Want good markets? Change the people.
Only a very small proportion of us take those excesses with us into later life. In the age before everyone had a camera, it was worthwhile, in my opinion, to record those excesses. Sometimes, many times actually, the young people I photographed were only dressed that way for one night; that one night that they got snapped by me.
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