Irregardless, during lunch today I was discussing interesting quotes, quips, comebacks, and even in one case, almost a partial quote.

Partial Quote First:

Towards the end of Albert Einstein’s life, he began working furiously to disprove some of his own earlier work as it lead to the beginning of quantum theory.  In a debate between Mr. Einstein and immense genius Neils Bohr, Mr. Einstein was explaining his objections to the probabilistic nature of quantum theory, versus his beliefs in a more deterministic.  His life work of finding that elusive theory of everything, he couldn’t bring himself to believe in a chaotic or random system.  To that end he stated confidently:

“God does not play dice with the universe.”

Which is a quote that a lot of people have heard before.  The better quote from this exchange however belongs to Mr. Bohr who replied:

“”Don’t tell God what to do with his dice.”

From there, in my random, ADHD way, this lead to me think about other good comebacks or quips in history starting with President Ronald Reagan whose quick wit verged on genius.

Even in trying times he seemed to have his wits about him.  While going into surgery following the assassination attempt, he looked up to note he was surrounded by surgeons to whom he stated:

“God I hope you’re all Republicans.”

At a better time in his administration he used this humor very well.  During one press conference he was being pushed hard by a certain young white house correspondent, Sam Donaldson (here):

“Mr. President, in talking about the continuing recession tonight, you have blamed mistakes in the past and you have blamed the Congress. Does any of the blame belong to you?”

To which Mr. Reagan quickly replied:

“Yes because for many years I was a Democrat.”

For one of my all time favorite exchanges though, enter Milton Friedman.  As one of the most influential thinkers of this century, he pushed for school vouchers, for less regulations, against price & wage controls, and other topics.

One of those topics he successfully argued in Congress was to end the draft.  From LibertyUnbound (here):

…Friedman not only solidified the verdict against the draft; he vigorously defended it in congressional testimony. He had a famous confrontation with Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of the forces in Vietnam. Friedman tells it in “Two Lucky People”:

In the course of his testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I stopped him and said, “General, would you rather command an army of slaves?” He drew himself up and said, “I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.” I said, “I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.” But I went on to say, “If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.” That was the last that we heard from the general about mercenaries….

This was in 1966, where actual logic and rationale could have a real impact, regardless of “whose team” said it first:

…In December 1966, when the Vietnam War still had the strong support of the American public, the University of Chicago held a conference on the draft. There were 74 participants. Friedman was there, and spoke against the draft, as did economist Walter Oi. Several politicians were there too, including Senator Edward Kennedy and a young Republican congressman named Donald Rumsfeld. Also anthropologist Margaret Mead, who favored the draft. In his and his wife Rose’s autobiography, “Two Lucky People,” Friedman wrote:

I have attended many conferences. I have never attended any other that had so dramatic an effect on the participants. A straw poll taken at the outset of the conference recorded two-thirds of the participants in favor of the draft; a similar poll at the end, two-thirds opposed. I believe that this conference was the key event that started the ball rolling decisively toward ending the draft….

That’s all for this inaugural installment of Random Quote Wednesday.   Please feel free to share interesting stories and quotes from history.

PS:  For any Anita Dunn fans – I will not quote mass murderers with admiration nor ever refer to any dictator as one of my favorite philosophers.

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Google on Thursday declared the worst of the recession over and paved the way for a return to heavy spending on expansion as it reported a surprisingly strong 8 per cent jump in net revenues in its latest quarter….

Fear not friends – they aren’t basing this just on themselves, but all that economic data they have:

The optimism reflected what the company said was an across-the-board recovery in online advertising, with even the struggling financial services sector showing a return to growth….

Apparently though, Google forgot to tell Bank of America about its wonderful news (BoA 3Q):

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp posted a $1 billion third-quarter loss as consumer credit woes eclipsed investment banking earnings, underlining why the bank remains on a government respirator….

I’m sure they just missed that… wonder what a really big blue chip company might be doing?  GE?:

General Electric’s third-quarter results showed just how fragile the U.S. economy remains, as its troubled financial unit dragged down earnings 44 percent, despite gains in divisions that make wind turbines, household appliances and broadcast television shows….

Not only are GE, BoA, and the 9.8% unemployed unaware of this great news, but even Google insiders don’t seem to know.  Looking at the public record, Google Insiders Sales, shows recent transactions for all senior officers dropping approximately 5% of their current Google holdings just last month.

Call me a raving skeptic if you will, but I’m thinking that you need to evaluate your decision making skills if you take your economic news directly from Google press releases.

Don’t get me wrong here, they make a great product and innovate better than almost anyone.   They are and will continue to be a force in computing for sometime to come because of their agile nature combined with some of the best minds in the world.  & I remember webcrawler… wow things are sooooo much better.

Regardless of their product however, it seems their investments into economic modeling & research in respect to business cycles is limited to zero.  I would add that if you’re an investor, that’s a good thing.  Better to let them do what they do best.

Why the press release then?  The only ones who know are those who drafted the press release and those with editing decisions prior to its release.  Without any information directly from one or more of these people, then reasoning is simply impossible to prove.

We can however ask some questions to try to find the likely answer.

(To be fair) The first possibility is simple honesty & stupidity.  Someone might have intended the “recession worst over” as a marketing technique to further enhance their aim to be seen as a very smart company.  All without realizing that overly simplistic analysis, based mainly upon very recent stock market activity and their profits do not make for effective proof.  Really, it’s just another anecdote that Google’s employees share.

Another, far more concerning possibility is their politics and desire to wish to see the President do well.  For years they have given most of their political donations to one particular party.  In 2008, Democratic candidates received 5 times more money than their Republican counterparts from Google.  Their employees, including top executives, gave 10 times more money to Democrats the Republicans.

Additionally, their search site has self-imposed constraints for arbitrary reasons.  For instance, Google refuses to allow gun dealers to advertise.   As a little experiment, slip over there real quick and run a quick search on swords or strippers.  Take note of the small advertisements to the right side of your search results.  Now do the same for guns and see what ads show up… I’ll wait.

They state their policy is to not allow advertising of weapons, but I think swords should qualify.

That could be an outlier, so let’s move forward assuming their ban on gun adverts is a true policy against weapons in general.

Then why did they also restrict advertising by Pro-life groups until forced by a judge to change their policy:

After a legal conflict between Google and The Christian Institute, filed when one the of religious foundation’s ads were rejected from the Google Adwords system, Google has changed their religious advertising policy to allow pro-life advertising to appear along with their secular and pro-choice advertising…

They did change their policy, but only after being sued.  Even giving them some credit for reversing their decision, their originally stated policy reeks of political and personal opinions:

The decision changes the former Google policy which excluded any ad containing a combination of “abortion and religion-related content“…. [emphasis added mine]

Putting all of this together, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that Google is using its outstanding press relations due to their history as a vibrant and smart company to help those with which they agree.

Which is completely and totally their right.  It’s their right to put their money where they wish, to make internal policies as they see fit, and to accept contracts for advertising from those they want for any reason they want.  None of this freedom for me, but not for thee crap.  Let them do as they will I say.

Just make sure your informed and know who you’re doing business with as well.

PS:  If you’re not doing anything on a Saturday night and there’s positively nothing on TV including uninteresting infomercials about idiots unable to use blankets, then you can check out some pretty heavy economic think tanks.  First and foremost, the recognized economic powerhouse, generally recognized as the institution who makes the call on things like, when is it a recession?  When did it start?  When did it end?

NBER, or the National Bureau of Economic Research, has long been the a standard bearer in economic research in all kinds of aspects of life ranging from health care to labor studies.  They are the largest non-profit economic research organization in the US and boasts about the great minds working there.  In fact, 16 of the 31 American winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, have been associates NBER, including one of my heroes: Milton Friedman.

PSS:  They could turn out to be right.  The luck of life sometimes means you can do the wrong thing and end with the correct result and vice versa – you can do the right thing and end with the wrong result.  Therefore, to correctly analyze thought patterns over time, any one result isn’t necessarily a deterministic factor.