If there weren't so many professors, medicine would be much easier.
Risk is just an expensive substitute for information.
The game of business used to be like football: size mattered. Then it changed to basketball: speed and agility. Today, business is more like chess. Customer priorities change continually, and the signals given by these changes are vital clues to the next cycle of growth.
Does anyone ever shudder with the crap that you pulled off and didn't die?
It's a scary thing; moving on. Part of me wishes life were more predictable and part of me is excited that it's not. I think it's impossible to tell the good things from the bad things while they're happening.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway.
Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.