Bill Bonner Quotes

Central planning doesn't work. A little bit of it is a drag. A lot is fatal.

Harness the Power of Accelerated Failure - the faster you fail, the faster you succeed.

The entire world economy rests on the consumer; if he ever stops spending money he doesn't have on things he doesn't need -- we're done for.

You don't get what you want from investing, you get what you deserve.

That is the problem with age and wisdom—it merely shows you how helpless you are. The wiser you become, the more you learn to keep your mouth shut, until eventually the grave silences you forever.

If you look carefully, almost all Old Money secrets can be traced to a single source: a longer-term outlook.

Printing up extra money - with no backing - used to be the sort of thing only counterfeiters did. Now it is done by the central bankers and Treasury Secretaries themselves. They don't apologize for it. They don't hang their heads and contemplate blowing their brains out. Instead, they're proud of it... announcing that they 'saved civilization,' or some such claptrap.

Neither limits nor adversity are what ruin men. Under pressure, they handle themselves pretty well. It’s the lack of limits they can’t handle. That’s when they run amok. So, if you really want to see what a man is made of let him think he can get away with something.

A man's wealth can...also be measured by what he doesn't have and doesn't want. When he wants little, he is a rich man.

Remember, government is not an enlightened organization designed to promote public welfare. It is barbaric, uncivilized force…military and police power put to the service of the insiders who control it. Yes, there are constraints on the way the insiders use their power. There are ‘checks and balances,’ built into the constitution, for example. And there are cultural norms and traditional prohibitions. But eventually, the norms and traditions wear off, like painkillers. And then, the pain of raw government begins again.

If there is one thing that marks families with money in the long term it is this: delayed gratification.

People do not get what they want or what they expect from the markets; they get what they deserve.

You can forget about recovery. There is no recovery - and there's not going to be any recovery. Recovery is an impossibility.

Norman Rockwell spent his career painting pictures that helped people understand their own feelings...pictures that enriched their own experiences and celebrated their own lives. But the art establishment branded him an 'illustrator', a sentimental one at that. Real artists, they said were doing art for art's sake, not for the sake of the bourgeois public. Real artists were putting swiggles, smears or daubs of paint on the canvas. They were doing 'innovative' and 'creative' work. If they were hideous and grotesque; we know that's what life really is!

Only simple ideas can be held by large groups of people. Commonly held ideas are almost always dumbed down until they are practically lies... and often dangerous ones. Once vast numbers of people have come to believe the lie, they adjust their own behavior to bring themselves into sync with it, and thereby change the world itself. The world, then, no longer resembles the one that gave rise to the original insight. Soon, a person's situation is so at odds with the world as it really is that a crisis develops, and he or she must seek a new metaphor for explanation and guidance.

People are upset. They know something is wrong. But they don't know what. The real explanation is too complicated. They won't sit still for it. So, they look for scapegoats - the rich...the banks...the Chinese.

The economic freedom that made the U.S. economy the leader of the world has given way toa rigged, controlled, and regulated economy.

The US is headed for ruin and revolution. The revolution will almost certainly be put down, violently. But the ruin cannot be stopped.

Anyone who wants to vote probably shouldn't be allowed to vote. Voting is the first step towards zombification - trying to get something without actually working for it.

A man on his owns knows that he is best advised to leave his dumbbell neighbors alone. But let him join a political party, and he fantasizes that he has the right and the power to tell everyone on the block what to do.

The promise of American capitalism is that it makes people richer, freer and more independent. But since the introduction of Fed, the currency in which Americans keep score has so addled the figures, we scarcely know if we are winning or losing. The dollar we knew as a child - in the 1950's - is only worth a tenth as much today.

Both the liberal and the conservative are in agreement: it is all very well to let the people alone, but only if they do what you want them to do.

No man bears more responsibility for the present worldwide financial crisis and coming depression than Alan Greenspan.

None of the problems that caused the crises in Europe and America have been resolved. They have been delayed and expanded by more debt and more money printing and will lead to more and worse crises.