As part of our monitoring of economic financial conditions, I keep a brief diary of events gathered from the FT, and occasionally other sources. Some of the quotes stick out like a ray of sunshine on a cold summer’s day.

May 2012 “Like some dreadful joke, the euro needs French reform, German extravagance and Italian political austerity”

November 2012 “The best that we can say about the EU being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is at least it didn’t get one for economics”

December 2012, taken from a GMO article on the expansion of the US QE programme, “The ex Chair of the US Federal Reserve William Mc Chesney Martin once said that the key role of the central bank was to take away the punch bowl when the party is getting started. Ben Bernanke [the then Fed Chairman] is acting like a teenage boy on prom night, spiking the bowl, handing out free drinks and hoping to get lucky”

January 2013 “Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want. The adults pay up. Deficits are when adults tell the governments what they want. Their kids will pay for it”

January 2013, the Lance Armstrong doping scandal breaks and he is compared to “Bernie Madoff on a bike”.

January 2013, Paul Krugman “Deflation requires a ‘looking glass realm’ where virtue is a vice and prudence is folly”

March 2013, on the UK losing its AAA credit rating “Being downgraded by Moodys’ is like being called a moron by a moron”

June 2013, Charlie Munger “If you are not confused about the economy, you don’t understand it very well”

September 2013 “Western economies, whose rapid debt fuelled growth became victims of their own excess”

April 2014 “The London property market hottest since 1666”

April 2014 “This argument is no stronger on second glance than the first”

February 2015 “Greek reform is progressing at the pace of an an injured snail, on Valium”

Jan 2016 “Donald Trump is like a Zeppelin. Full of gas, floating ominously overhead and one day it will suddenly explode”

March 2016 “The FCA is concerned that around half of consumers think that pensions are difficult to understand. Shouldn’t we be more concerned with the other half who by implication believe them to be simple?”

June 2016 Barack Obama “They say Donald [Trump] lacks the foreign policy experience to be president, but in fairness he has spent years meeting leaders from around the world: Miss Sweden, Miss Argentina, Miss Azerbaijan…”