Once an economy reaches a certain level of acceleration... the Fed is no longer with you... The Fed, instead of trying to get the economy moving, reverts to acting like the central bankers they are and starts worrying about inflation and things getting too hot.
I think ageing demographics is a bigger issue in China than people think. And the problems it creates should be become evident as early as 2016.
If machines do everything well, including allocating capital and resources efficiently, can that be deflationary, can that eliminate poverty? I don't know. It's hard to be very optimistic if you look at how humans have behaved historically.
I don't put Tesla in the Amazon category. They have not proved to me that, as a financial model and an economic model, it is going to work.
I love Amazon.
All in all, I don't think robots and greater automation can bring about a utopian world as I imagined it would as a kid 50 years ago.
I like putting all my eggs in one basket and then watching the basket very carefully.
With my business, the way you make big money is you find a great management team and a good concept, and you stick to it, and you add to it over time. In philanthropy, there was more this idea that once an idea was formulated, you moved along.
Bitcoin is like anything else: it's worth what people are willing to pay for it.
If you're running a business for the long term, the last thing you should be doing is borrowing money to buy back stock.
The first thing I heard when I got in the business - not from my mentor - was, 'Bulls make money, bears make money, and pigs get slaughtered.' I'm here to tell you I was a pig. And I strongly believe the only way to make long-term returns in our business that are superior is by being a pig.
Every serious deflation I've looked at is preceded by an asset bubble, and then it bursts.
I think old people like Hillary Clinton and I shouldn't try and be cool with social networks, you know; maybe she should leave that stuff up to Chelsea.
What a company's been earning doesn't mean anything. What you have to look at is what people think it's going to earn. If you can see something in two years is going to be entirely different than the conventional wisdom, that's how you make money.
If you're early on in your career and they give you a choice between a great mentor or higher pay, take the mentor every time. It's not even close. And don't even think about leaving that mentor until your learning curve peaks.
The way you create deflation is you create an asset bubble.
Earnings don't move the overall market; it's the Federal Reserve Board... focus on the central banks, and focus on the movement of liquidity... most people in the market are looking for earnings and conventional measures. It's liquidity that moves markets.
Part of my advantage is that my strength is economic forecasting, but that only works in free markets, when markets are smarter than people. That's how I started. I watched the stock market, how equities reacted to change in levels of economic activity, and I could understand how price signals worked and how to forecast them.
I don't like the repeal of the estate tax.
Whenever I see a stock market explode, six to 12 months later you are in a full blown recovery.
