• Thought of the Day

    Thought of the Day

    2000: It is amazing to see how many capable businessmen try to operate in Wall Street with complete disregard of all the sound principles through which they have gained success in their own undertakings. Yet every corporate security may best be viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise. And if a person sets out to make profits from security purchases and sales, he is embarking on a business venture of his own, which must be run in accordance with accepted business principles if it is to have a chance of success.

    –Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor (New York: HarperBusiness, 2003), p. 523.

Today in Financial History

1980: The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of the nation's economic recessions and expansions, finally declares that a recession has begun — in January, 1980, that is.

1880: Wireless telecommunication gets a quick false start when Alexander Graham Bell transmits the first message on his new "photophone," which bounces sound off a mirror and uses a beam of sunlight to project the mirror's vibrations onto a photosensitive receiver. Although Bell was never able to commercialize his photophone, modern fiber optics work on the same basic principle.

1775: The national debt of the U.S. is born, as the Continental Congress authorizes a loan of 6 million pounds sterling to buy gunpowder. Like politicians today, our founding fathers couldn't wait to spend money they didn't have.

William G. Anderson, The Price of Liberty: The Public Debt of the American Revolution (University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1983), p. 6.