Heck.com

From Selling Money by S. C. Gwynne, pp. 59-60:

The commercial banks had zeroed in on foreign central banks largely in the absence of any other reliable reporting institution.  As a colleague of mine observed later: “Who the hell else were you going to ask?”  The only other possibility that came to mind was the U.S. embassy’s economic attaché, who was only slightly less bureaucratic and sheltered than the central-bank officials, and whose access to financial statistics was severely limited.  The question remained: If you wanted accurate, up-to-date, inside knowledge of a country, who would provide it?  The six o’clock news?  Politicians?  Religious leaders?  Academics?  Bankers?  Businessmen?  The answer – assuming you could get one at all – might involve a combination of all of those things, and that was patently impossible for someone with a business agenda as jammed as Herrick’s.

…..

They [Cleveland Trust's upper management] did not believe that the Wall Street Journal was a better intelligence source than five hundred conversations over tea with central bank officials, although this was often true…It cannot be said that Herrick retrieved bad information, which was delivered in other, more sophisticated forms, but that he brought back no information on the country’s political or social stability that could not be gotten from a reasonably well-staffed news service.

In his latest memo to investors (“Warning Flags“), Howard Marks writes

Investors have made a substantial move back in the direction of pre-crisis behavior.  That behavior has to be recognized and monitored.  The pendulum has moved away from the depression, panic, skepticism and excessive risk aversion we saw in the fourth quarter of 2008, and with the disappearance of those characteristics have gone the great bargain opportunities.

Investors have made a substantial move back in the direction of pre-crisis behavior.  That behavior has to be recognized and monitored.  The pendulum has moved away from the depression, panic, skepticism and excessive risk aversion we saw in the fourth quarter of 2008, and with the disappearance of those characteristics have gone the great bargain opportunities.

From a Bloomberg article (archived here:

http://www.feedcry.com/archive/aid/609273?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+fulltext/Bloomberg+(Bloomberg)

):

Wisconsin Experiment

That’s when the scene shifts to Wisconsin, where HBO was running an experiment in Milwaukee and Green Bay. HBO was letting people watch its programming online as long as they could prove they were subscribers.

The results of the test were unexpected: Viewers who tuned into “Big Love” on their laptops didn’t spend any less time watching HBO on their TV sets. Bewkes was buoyed by the possibility that the same model might work more widely and that his cable properties might be able to keep subscribers from gravitating elsewhere, says a Time Warner executive involved in the discussions.

Bewkes told his team: “We can’t just talk about it, or play the victim. We need to build a model,” the executive recalls.

“We can’t just talk about it, or play the victim. We need to build a model.”  In the original context, this quote deals with the threat to cable TV from the Internet.  However, this inspirational wisdom is quite generic – we can apply it to other situations as well.