Quotes of the day

This municipal issue, you can criticize me for anything you want, I’m numb to it, because I have more conviction on this than I’ve had on any single thing in my career.--Meredith Whitney

I wear a t-shirt and jockey shorts if only to remind me of a sleeping pot-bellied captain and that old Navy adage – constant bearing, decreasing range – constant bearing, decreasing range.--Bill Gross

In my business, if losing money shakes you up, you won’t last until “spring,” let alone become a “raider in winter.” Ironically, and at the risk of being immodest, I believe the financial crisis was my finest hour as an investor and as a man who stood by his commitments. During the crisis, many hedge fund investors demanded their money back, but many funds refused. My fund returned capital to any investor who asked. To meet withdrawals, from November 2008 to March 2009, I invested $500 million of my own capital, rather than having the fund sell significant positions at depressed prices. While I believed then that my investment might have a major short-term loss, it became one of my best ever, resulting in a 61 percent annualized return. The hedge fund in general certainly was not a losing experience. My investment in it over the last seven years totaled $3.4 billion. My profit on that, including fees, now totals $2.1 billion.--Carl Icahn

In 2009, Mr. Trump's lawsuit against a journalist who estimated his net worth at less than $250 million included a report by his defense team that pegged Mr. Trump's net worth at $788 million. The case was thrown out. Mr. Trump disputes all this, but it is clear that he isn't as renowned on Wall Street as he is on Main Street. ... How about Donald Bren, Richard LeFrak, Leonard Stern or John Sobrato, real-estate developers who rank higher than Mr. Trump on the Forbes richest Americans list? Imagine Mr. Trump in that same lineup. Would anyone not recognize him? Of course not. Fiction usually is more popular than the truth.--David Weidner

At some level, this [special operations mission against Bin Laden] was the ultimate Jack Bauer play.  9/11 was the lens through which ’24′ was watched. This is a cultural touchstone. It wasn’t a drone attack that killed him but a tactical team that went in. It’s the conflation of the fictional world of Jack Bauer and real-life heroism.--Howard Gordon, 24 executive producer

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