Financial Time Out – For Poetry

Mono PrintIn honor of the 4.5 years since Warren Buffett showed us all how its done, in the midst of the near-implosion of the financial universe, and in light of the announcement today about how he continues to reap the benefits of his investments, an oldy but goody, “If.”

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
By  Rudyard Kipling, 1865–1936

Post read (1935) times.

3 Replies to “Financial Time Out – For Poetry”

  1. Michael,
    I think the following suits you personally much better 🙂

    “Come, my friends,
    ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
    Push off, and sitting well in order smite
    The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
    Of all the western stars, until I die.”

    “Ulysses”, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  2. Savings move to NORTH EU, Amsterdam is last corporate tax haven. You do not want to have savings in the south EU with the 40% saving-cut -rescue-solution. Cyprus will go down in 6 month. Tourism can’t save Cyprus. banking market in Europe, with total assets of over €7,470 billion and then the EU makes a remark over cutting savings….haha bet 10-30 % money start moving north …. to Deijselbloems Amsterdam corporate tax haven..
    nice controlled crash …

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I founded Bankers Anonymous because, as a recovering banker, I believe that the gap between the financial world as I know it and the public discourse about finance is more than just a problem for a family trying to balance their checkbook, or politicians trying to score points over next year’s budget – it is a weakness of our civil society. For reals. It’s also really fun for me.

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