John Bogle, the well known mutual fund advisor and author of Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life wrote, “There was a sign in Einstein’s office that says, “There are some things that count that can’t be counted and some things that can be counted that don’t count.” That really sums it up. We’ve got this counting society and we rely on numbers to give us facts that are really not facts. If someone’s corporation says their earnings were $1.32 per share, the amount of financial engineering that’s gone into that number is usually rather breathtaking, It’s an engineered number and the idea that you think you know something when you’ve seen that number is just greatly overdone. We think we can count everything that’s important and we can’t do that. You can’t measure character. You can’t measure integrity. You can’t measure moral conduct. You can’t measure love. You can’t measure the things that are really important in our lives and our society.” (see partial NPR transcript from 01/01/2009 interview)
John Paulson, the famous hedge fund investor who bet against the housing market in 2005-2007, said recently during a lecture at the University Club in Manhattan, Oct. 2010 “If you don’t own a home buy one, if you own one home, buy another one, and if you own two homes buy a third and lend your relatives the money to buy a home as it’s never been cheaper or smarter to buy a home than now…your debt and interest payments get locked in at record lows, while the price of your home will rise.” Paulson recently purchased a $24.5M Aspen home in June. (sent to me Nov. ’10 from Manhattan realtor, Karen Kelley, SVP The Corcoran Group)
Winston Churchill, “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” (sent to me from Telluride Broker, George Harvey, Nov. 2010)
And…lastly, here is a quite fun, maybe familiar “Pushy Real Estate Agent” video. Enjoy and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
