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.
Have rational expectations for future returns and avoid changing those expectations in response to the ephemeral noise coming from Wall Street.
Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.
I cannot invest the way I want the world to be; I have to invest the way the world is.
People come in. They are too gung ho. They invest too much money in things they don't know. They lose it and then they clam up and stop investing. Then they miss the actual boom. That's the nature of the market.
If I subscribed to the efficient market theory I would still be delivering papers
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.