• Thought of the Day

    Thought of the Day

    2000: It is extraordinary how frequently security analysts and the crowd are doing the same thing. In fact, I can't remember any case in which they weren't.

    –Benjamin Graham, in Janet Lowe, ed., The Rediscovered Benjamin Graham: Selected Writings of the Wall Street Legend (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999), p. 226

Today in Financial History

1990: The "thrift crisis" is everywhere at once. The estimated cost of bailing out failed savings & loan companies — pegged just one year earlier at $158 billion — is revised by government forecasters to a minimum of $285 billion to $350 billion. "We all erred dramatically on the side of underestimating the problem," says U.S. Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah). In other savings & loan news, Woody Lemons, the former chairman of Vernon Savings & Loan Association, is sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for bank fraud and taking kickbacks from borrowers.

The Wall Street Journal, April 6, 1990, pp. A2, B8;The Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1990, p. 1.