The Ponzi Factor Quotes

“Stocks are intangible things that are priced in terms of cash, but the price of a stock is not legitimately backed by anyone. If you have a $1,100 share of Google, the only money you are entitled to from Google is the par value of $0.001. This also means if you are holding $110,000 in Google stocks, you are technically only owed $0.10.”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“also”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“It’s funny how the economy is about to collapse because people are only buying what they need.”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“I am speaking up now and saying there is something fundamentally wrong with an industry that has convinced investors they are entitled to $36 trillion that doesn’t exist. There is something fundamentally wrong with an industry that sells imaginary products without any proof of their legitimacy or value. And there is something fundamentally wrong with an industry that pays people unimaginable amounts of money for creating absolutely nothing.”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“The former CEO of Bear Sterns, Alan Schwartz, received a total compensation of $37.3 million in 2006 and he was listed as one of Fortune’s 25 Highest-paid men. After his firm collapsed in 2008, Alan admitted to a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, “I believe that we’ve never believed we had the ability to predict the next market movement.”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” —Max Planck”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“In His Book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Dr. Daniel Kahneman talks about a study conducted by psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons that demonstrated how focus on a task can make people effectively blind to things that would normally attract attention.”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“Accrual accounting lets firms account for imaginary profits in real time, even when there is no guarantee it will ever materialize in the future. Two essential conditions make this type of accounting possible: One, the asset has to be illiquid, and two, the asset has to be difficult to price. This makes the assumed value of the asset impossible to validate and refute, which essentially allows the fund manager to mark the value of the asset according to his or her imagination.”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“The problem is, the money investors take out of the system is coming from other investors who are putting money into the system, and the stock market is just a system that shuffles cash between investors. It is a system where current investors’ profits are strictly dependent on the inflow of money from new investors. And, such a system is also known as a “Ponzi scheme.”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits

“But, there is one thing…If you think it is a really good idea, and other people tell you it’s COMPLETE NONSENSE. Then you are really onto something. —Deep Learning AI Pioneer, Geoffrey Hinton”
― Tan Liu, The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits