Whatever You Tax You Get Less Of.

Even Though Some Down Payments Are Borrowed, It Would Take A Large, And Historically Most Unusual, Fall In Home Prices To Wipe Out A Significant Part Of Home Equity. Many Of Those Who Purchased Their Residence More Than A Year Ago Have Equity Buffers In Their Homes Adequate To Withstand Any Price Decline Other Than A Very Deep One.

No Matter How Skillful The Trading Scheme, Over The Long Haul, Abnormal Returns Are Sustained Only Through Abnormal Exposure To Risk.

I've Been In And Out Of Wall Street Since 1949, And I've Never Seen The Type Of Animosity Between Government And Wall Street. And I'm Not Sure Where It Comes From, But I Suspect It's Got To Do With A General Schism In This Society Which Is Really Becoming Ever More Destructive.

The Abandonment Of The Gold Standard Made It Possible For The Welfare Statists To Use The Banking System As A Means To An Unlimited Expansion Of Credit. In The Absence Of The Gold Standard, There Is No Way To Protect Savings From Confiscation Through Inflation. There Is No Safe Store Of Value. Deficit Spending Is Simply A Scheme For The Hidden Confiscation Of Wealth. Gold Stands In The Way Of This Insidious Process. It Stands As A Protector Of Property Rights. If One Grasps This, One Has No Difficulty In Understanding The Statists' Antagonism Toward The Gold Standard.

What We Have Found Over The Years In The Marketplace Is That Derivatives Have Been An Extraordinarily Useful Vehicle To Transfer Risk From Those Who Shouldn't Be Taking It To Those Who Are Willing To And Are Capable Of Doing So.