Quotes of the day

Risk is like sex because its payoff depends more on context than quantity.--Eric Falkenstein

Life isn’t a Taylor Swift song, with all the hardship left out. It works more like a Normal Mailer novel, with all the gritty garbage left in. Stop falling for the romantic version of life, and start realizing that a romantic story is told with an enormous amount of pain, sacrifice, suffering and patience.--Don Miller

It seems the journalist profession has forgotten all about the ethics of journalists. It would be inappropriate for Rupert and James Murdoch to be told the source if the journalist wanted it protected and it would be inappropriate for Rupert and James Murdoch to ask. Of course a large slab of the journalist profession has forgotten all about journalist ethics and just assumed that the proprietor should and does know. Of course they have. These journalists are themselves non-ethical. They have forgotten journalist ethics. When you talk to a journalist off-the-record you have - in the past - had a reasonable basis for presuming that the off-the-record conversation will be respected. You can't assume that anymore. Journalists have forgotten the basic ethics of the profession.--John Hempton

Like many a Banana Republic, we may one day be invoking the Lord’s Prayer, pleading – “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” yet at the same time looking towards the heavens á la Saint Augustine with a fervent “let me be chaste, but let it be tomorrow.” ... The press and most professional investors are accustomed to measuring “paper” debt as opposed to walking/living liabilities in the form of people. I call these liabilities “debt men walking” because as long as 330 million living Americans require promised entitlements – the $66 trillion that wear shoes are as much of a liability as the $10 trillion on paper.--Bill Gross

Three percent per year in real GDP is the long-term growth rate of the American economy since 1880. This is considerably below the usual growth rate of GDP in a decade after a major recession. This is why I believe three percent growth is achievable with tax reform (that would include some tax increases), and with major controls over the growth of spending. Keeping real federal spending growth to 1% per year will be a huge challenge since entitlements, like Medicare, will grow much faster than that over the next decade without sizable entitlement reforms that greatly cut their cost to the government. Still, the spending growth rate is doable. A major start would be to cut back some of the sizable expansion of federal spending since 2007. That combined with serious reforms that cut government spending on Medicare, especially for the elderly with decent financial means, would go a long way toward keeping the real growth of federal spending in the range of 1% per year for a decade.--Gary Becker

I have no clue if Randy Moss reached his potential as a wide receiver. Could he have caught 183 TD passes instead of 153? Maybe. Could Mickey Mantle have hit 650 home runs if he had skipped Toots Shor’s and gone home to Marylin and the kids? I guess. Who knows? In 1985 it sure seemed possible that starting pitchers would someday be competing for the Dwight Gooden Award. Stuff happens. ... Randy Moss did not play every snap as if it was his last. Randy Moss had some off-the-field issues that were (and remain) troubling. Randy Moss was sometimes a good teammate, but very often a lousy one. Randy Moss was selfish. Randy Moss had an act that wore thin, and he burned bridge after bridge in his career. All those things are very true, and all those aren’t nearly enough to convince me that a Hall of Fame that has a spot for O.J. Simpson and Lawrence Taylor has to make Randy Moss wait a year or two before giving him the keys. Was he perfect? Nope. Does he leave a mixed legacy? He sure does. But Randy Moss is the very definition of a first-ballot Hall of Famer.--Kirk Minihane

It's going to be scary, scary for other teams. ... I went to the Pro Bowl with Vince and the funny thing is, I said 'What if we were on the same team?' He was like, 'That would be crazy, there's no way that's going to happen.' But 2, 3 years later, here we are.--Albert Haynesworth

All the reasons I hide behind my pseudonym remain in full force and effect; I will only forgo the pretense once Steve Schwarzman and Henry Kravis drop theirs and marry in public on the steps of City Hall. In the meantime, just don't confuse the man behind the curtain with the Wizard of Oz. I have many valuable things in my gift, but yacht rides on the Mediterranean are not one of them. ... [Coach Belichick]'s very detail-oriented and he demands perfection every single time. I've been with some really good teams, with a lot of great players, but I've never been in a situation where it's like perfection every time -- not for a person, but for a team.--TED

I wish I had wrote that.--Cav

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