matisse capital management

Money Quotes of The Week

"Dividends are usually the last thing to go.  You might as well put a big sign on your lawn saying you have liquidity problems."

    -Howard Silverblatt, analyst at Standard & Poor's

"Millions of decent taxpayers will foot the bill for institutional idiocy."

     -Jeff Randall, in the Telegraph UK, on the collapse of Equitable Life

"...from what we see and what we project, we see no reason to cut the dividend,"

     -Ken Lewis, Bank of America CEO

"In 1995 Malaysia's finance ministry reportedly proposed caning as a punishment for abusive shorting."

     -Economist, article on short selling

Money Quotes of The Week

"Eighty-five million barrels of oil a day is all the world can produce, and the demand is 87 million.  It’s just that simple,”

      -T. Boone Pickens

“The price is going to go up until governments that subsidize oil consumption in Asia and the Middle East can no longer afford it.”

      -Adam Sieminski, Deutsche Bank

It is an ”illusion that one country, even the most powerful, can act as a global government”

                                                  -Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

“We like Bank of America but I wonder if they went for the franchise much too soon. It’s a deal that we hope won’t bite them too badly over time.”

                                                  -David Dreman, on B of A's Countrywide acquisition

Money Quotes of The Week - May 14

"At this year’s meeting of the Mortgage Bankers Association in Boston last week, attendance was down by half and speakers delivered presentations with titles such as 'How to stay off the implode-o-meter.'"

      -Financial Times Article, "Value to Unlock," 5/11

"If the United States were any other country, these would surely be days of panic and austerity in Washington."

       -New York Times, "The Dollar: Shrinkable but (So Far) Unsinkable," 5/11

“These central banks know that holding these low-yielding Treasury bills is just an aid program to the United States, and they want to get out of that business...”

       -Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at International Monetary Fund

"The nice decade is behind us..."

       -Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, on inflation report, 5/14

Money Quotes of the Week - April 28

“In this market, if an investment bank doesn’t report $20 billion of write-downs, you tend to be quite relieved.”

           -Analyst with Helvea, London, on Credit Suisse write downs.

“Rising energy prices are one of the few factors that can drive a wedge between the performance of the two economies.”

          -Dale Orr, of Global Insight Canada, on Canadian and US economies.

"It is clearly feasible for us to take 10, 15, 20% off our cost base, especially in information technology and operations..."

          -Citigroup's Vikram Pandit on cutting 9,000 jobs.

"They approached me and said I'd get trail [trailing commissions]. We'd just jack up the margin loan for my clients..."

           -Australian broker after failure of firm Opes Prime.

"I've been conducting a 70-year taste test since I was about seven years old on the products."       

           -Warren Buffett on his Wrigley's takeover.

Money Quotes of the Week

“UBS was the figurehead of Swiss business. As a good housewife, I know you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. A bank is not a casino.”

        -Shareholder Therese Klemenz on $37 B in writedowns, UBS shareholder meeting.

"They missed the sub-prime mortgage crisis...This is like putting Eliot Spitzer in charge of the morals division."

        -Greg Valliere, Stanford Financial Group on the Fed's expanded regulatory role.

"We cannot make life easier for those who have made mistakes. They have to pay for their mistakes."

        -Jean-Claude Trichet, head of European Central Bank on subprime

"...It seems extremely likely that banks and other 'near' banks...will be called upon to hold more capital and a greater quantity of liquid assets than hitherto."

        -Bank of England Governor Mervyn King on new regulations