The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM.
Interpretation
Volcker critiques the banking industry's lack of innovation beyond the ATM in two decades.
In this quote, Paul Volcker expresses his disappointment with the banking sector, suggesting that it has stagnated in innovation over the last twenty years, with the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) being the only significant advancement during that period. This statement reflects a broader sentiment regarding the banking industry, where the focus may be more on maintaining traditional profit models rather than pursuing creative solutions that serve customer needs or drive economic progress.
In practice
During a financial conference, one might use this quote to highlight the need for more innovation in banking.
It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with 'free banking.' The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.
When I hear complaints about less liquidity, remember there is such a thing as too much liquidity.
What's the subject of life - to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life.
The grim irony of investing is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for.
We tend to focus on assets and forget about debts. Financial security requires facing up to the big picture: assets minus debts.
I believe, in the stock market - that's one of my fields - that most people are irrational. And to be irrational, you can be irrational in so many different ways that, practically, the result is indeterminate.
The problem that people don't understand is that active managers, almost by definition, have to be poorly diversified. Otherwise, they're not really active. They have to make bets. What that means is there's a huge dispersion of outcomes that are totally consistent with just chance. There's no skill involved it. It's just good luck or bad luck.
While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster
Families rely on financial services more than ever, but those who need them most - who struggle to make ends meet - too often must contend with sky-high interest rates and tricks and traps buried in the fine print of their loan products.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.