Alchemy Of Finance Quotes

Scientific method seeks to understand things as they are, while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, the primary objective of science is truth, - that of alchemy, operational success.

The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry.

I start from the position that every human endeavor is flawed: if we were to discard everything that is flawed there would be nothing left. We must therefore make the most of what we have; the alternative is to embrace death. The choice is a real one, because death can be embraced in a number of ways; the pursuit of perfection and eternity in all its manifestations is equivalent to choosing the idea of death over the idea of life. If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.

Values are closely associated with with the concept of self - a reflexive concept if ever there was one. What we think has a much greater bearing on what we are than on the world around us. What we are cannot possibly correspond to what we think we are, but there is a two-way interplay between the two concepts. As we make our way in the world our sense of self evolves. The relationship between what we think we are and what we are in reality is the key to happiness - in other words, it provides the subjective meaning of life.

Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating.

all of them are ideologues, and the ideology is, quite simply put, global domination by a self-appointed elite.

its first major weakness, for being committed rather unscientifically to such a closed system in which progress is to be shunned and suppressed, the Group shows that it is incapable of adaptability to changing circumstances that are not under its own control.

since a practically engineerable open-systems physics implies the democratization not only of energy, but its corollaries, finance and political power, across a very broad spectrum of people, as a greater mass of people would be lifted up to greater wealth, freedom, and prosperity.

By a closed economic system is meant the idea that the world’s energy supply, upon which the financial system of the banksters is based, is founded upon non-renewable energy sources such as oil, natural gas, and so on. Hence, the system is closed since the whole premise of the system is scarcity and nonrenewability.

Note the profound implications of this closed-system economic paradigm, for it necessitates that the Bilderberg and similar Groups must resort to active measures to suppress the scientific development of new theories and their allied technologies that would shift the world’s energy supply — and hence the financial system — to a new basis, and a basis no longer needing to be reliant upon their own monopoly financial power to create the medium of exchange and credit.

for one thing, I hope, is now evident: if in the private creation of money as an interest-bearing debt-note, only the principal, and not the interest, is created by those banks and circulated as “money,” then it inevitably follows that, under such a system, debt can only grow and never be repaid. With that fact, the influence and control of that private class of banksters over the policies of a state can only grow, and to the increasing detriment of that nation’s people and its public good.

Venedig war ein Krebsgeschwür, das gezielt seine eigenen Metastasen plante.

a bottle of champagne after establishing that she does indeed want bubbles. I’ll let her enjoy a glass before I bring up the topic I know will raise a flush to the surface of that slim, golden neck. But she beats me to it, in a roundabout way, when she asks me what I actually do for a living. ‘I know about one bit, obviously.’ She looks down at her glass. ‘But I’m sure Mummy told me you were in finance.’ ‘Yeah. I definitely didn’t tell your mum I owned a sex club,’ I deadpan, and she giggles. ‘So what else do you do?’ ‘I started out in M&A. Worked my arse off. Learnt how to model a company from scratch. Then I went to a hedge fund for a while. Ran some long-short funds.’ I take a sip of champagne. ‘A few years ago, I left with some mates and we struck out on our own. Now we run our own money and we provide leverage for other people who want to do the same.’ She scrunches up her nose. ‘You mean you lend them money?’ ‘Exactly. So they can take riskier positions. We also provide their infrastructure. Trading systems. Compliance. That sort of thing.’ ‘And what do you trade?’ ‘A bit of everything. The way my mates and I have organised things, everyone has their own expertise. Mine’s equity and corporate debt. That’s what I learnt in M&A. Some of the others

With such theories, economists developed a very elaborate toolkit for analyzing markets, measuring the "variance" and "betas" of different securities and classifying investment portfolios by their probability of risk. According to the theory, a fund manager can build an "efficient" portfolio to target a specific return, with a desired level of risk. It is the financial equivalent of alchemy. Want to earn more without risking too much more? Use the modern finance toolkit to alter the mix of volatile and stable stocks, or to change the ratio of stocks, bonds, and cash. Want to reward employees more without paying more? Use the toolkit to devise an employee stock-option program, with a tunable probability that the option grants will be "in the money." Indeed, the Internet bubble, fueled in part by lavish executive stock options, may not have happened without Bachelier and his heirs.

This is a survey, not an encyclopedia; a study, not a painting; an essay, not a mathematical or historical proof.

One of the reasons I was so bullish on the Deutsche mark was a radical currency theory proposed by George Soros in his book, The Alchemy of Finance. His theory was that if a huge deficit were accompanied by an expansionary fiscal policy and tight monetary policy, the country’s currency would actually rise.

Alchemy of Finance.

Soros regards himself as more a philosopher than a hit man. His book The Alchemy of Finance (1987) begins with a bold critique of the fundamental assumptions of economics as a subject,