When somebody makes it very easy for you to do it by saying you don't really have to put up my money, you can lie about your income a little, or we'll give you 100 percent mortgage, you're going to do it, because everybody that's done it has been proven right. You have social tools, and you're going to feel like an idiot if you didn't do it, because the house cost more.
Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party... the poor and middle class.
We do not have, nor have had, and never will have an opinion about where the stock market, interest rates, or business activity will be a year from now.
It is unquestionably true that the investment companies have their money more conventionally invested than we do. To many people conventionality is indistinguishable from conservatism. In my view, this represents erroneous thinking. Neither a conventional nor an unconventional approach, per se, is conservative.
I think you'll have plenty of scrutiny as how the money's invested. I mean, just like the RFC. When the RFC operated, people knew which institutions they were buying preferred stock in. And it worked very well.
The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.
Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.
The greatest investment a young person can make is in their own education, in their own mind. Because money comes and goes. Relationships come and go. But what you learn once stays with you forever.