Outside Economics

Commodities, such as oil or gold, typically follow an inverse, or negative relationship with the value of the dollar. A stronger dollar makes oil a less attractive commodity on dollar-denominated exchanges, especially in the eyes of investors holding other currencies. When the value of the dollar weakens against other major currencies, the prices of commodities generally move higher.

This inverse relationship also happens when countries devalue their currencies through inflation. This is one argument for the gold standard, it is said to keep monitary policies honest.

There are many reasons why the value of the dollar has an impact on commodity prices worldwide, namely commodities are typically priced in dollars. When the value of the dollar drops, it will take more dollars to buy the same amount of commodities. Commodities are traded in dollars because currently the dollar serves as the world’s reserve currency. Some countries, like the BRIC’s (Brazil, Russia, India and China are trying to change that and use the Chinese Yuan as a reserve currency or a basket of currencies from other countries rather than simply the US dollar.

Another reason is that commodities are traded around the world; foreign buyers purchase our commodities: corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, oil, etc., with dollars they have received in trade as we have purchased products they have manufactured. When the value of the dollar drops, they have more buying power and simple economics tells us that demand typically increases as prices drop.

Commodity traders often keep a close eye on the value of the dollar. An easy way to monitor the dollar is to watch the price quotes on the Dollar Index on the ICE Futures Exchange. It is an index of how the dollar is valued against a group of other major currencies around the world. The price of the index is traded like any other futures contract and you can get quotes throughout the day.

Commodity prices don’t necessarily tick higher for every tick lower in the Dollar Index, but there is a strong inverse relationship over time. Individual commodities can also buck the trend if other over whelming forces are causing the price to move along with the dollar.

Lately the dollar has gained strength against a backdrop of many countries whose currencies are weakening. This has been a factor in the lower prices we have seen at the pump. This strengthening has also had an impact on other commodities, precious metals, gold, silver, platinum, etc.

Typically, gold is seen by investors as a backup for the dollar. As the dollar weakens, the price of gold increases. As the dollar gains strength, gold prices drop. It is similar to the relationship between the dollar and oil. Which begs the question, is there a correlation between oil and gold?

There are a couple ideas that try to explain the correlation between gold and oil. One is that prices of crude oil partly account for inflation. Increases in the price of oil result in increased prices of gasoline at the pump. If fuels (gasoline, diesel oil, and aviation fuel) are more expensive, then it’s more costly to transport goods and those prices go up. The final result is increased prices – in other words, inflation.

The second thought on the oil-gold link is the fact that precious metals tend to appreciate when inflation is rising (especially in the current fiat monetary environment). So, an increase in the price of crude oil can, eventually, translate into higher precious metals prices resulting in oil becoming a new economic bench mark similar to gold.

While it usually takes some time for higher commodity prices to materialize as higher prices in goods and services, however for precious metals they trade daily in your portfolio and may trade in line with oil immediately. One explanation can be that, once oil appreciates, precious metals investors correlate the expected future higher prices of goods in the price of gold and it generally goes up.

However, even though the general price level of gold moves in a similar direction to oil, the relationship may not be trade-able based on data for the long term. While the correlation is positive, over longer periods of time and on average, this relationship does not always translate the same for gold and oil returns.

In 2000 oil was trading around $32 per barrel and gold was around $292. Currently oil is trading around $75 and gold at $1,183. Which translates for oil a 134 percent gain over the past 14 years and 305 percent gain for gold. (Obviously, these are low compared to recent highs in the past few years when oil hit around $140 per barrel and Gold was up around $1,800 per ounce.) By comparison, in January 2000 the CPI was at 168.800 and January 2014 the CPI was 233.916 or an increase of 38.6 percent. The low inflation rate compared to the increase cost of oil and gold can partially be explained by the number of times the Government has revised the method of calculating the CPI.

Having said that, it’s still possible for short-term patterns to emerge occasionally. So, even though there seems to be no relationship between gold and oil returns over the long term, it may happen that a relationship unveils itself in a short period of time offering trading opportunities.

In summary, while oil prices do not drive gold prices and gold does not drive oil prices, the main reason the two markets have similar long-term trends, as well as other commodities, is that they have one important long-term driver in common: monetary inflation.

Authorities – monetary authorities, political authorities, economists – seem to know less about money than our forebears did. We’re approaching the centennial of the beginning of the First World War. From the late 18th century through the First World War we had the greatest increase in human wealth in history; in that one and a quarter centuries we created more wealth than all the previous centuries put together! And from about the First World War until now, the economy has been tinkered and toyed with so much that it is on the verge of a world-wide collapse!

A key element to the success of those 125 years was stable money, starting with the British pound. Before that you had the Dutch, but they didn’t have quite the global influence that the Brits ended up having, especially with the industrial revolution. The United States under Alexander Hamilton put in a very sound money regime that made the United States standout, especially in relation to the Latin American republics which achieved their independence in the following decades, but have been troubled ever since by chronic monetary instability.

Yes, the US had boom and bust cycles during those years, but most were related to normal business cycles and speculation, not due to the collapse of our currency – of gold and silver – the currency was always stable.

Money is a simple subject – however, the money authorities want to surround it with a lot of jargons and equations. They want to make it appear that even if you master brain surgery or nuclear science, you are incapable of understanding money, which is ridiculous. People instinctively understand that stable money is good and that a weak dollar is not good for the United States. Great countries don’t have a weak currency. Overall, people understand the stabilizing effect of a gold standard.

The last hundred years have seen a gradual withdrawal from the gold standard until in the early 70's, America went off it completely. This allowed for an expansion in the economy since money was no longer tied to anything and could simply be printed at will. Although the 70's were distinctively marked by the Misery Index, we had a decent time of it in the 1980s and ’90s when we had a semi-stable monetary policy, but we still haven’t recovered from the early 2000s.

Crises often leads to reform. Well, we did not return to a gold standard in the 1980s. Neither have we returned to a gold standard today. This nation is beginning to recognize that the Fed is floundering and that the central banks cannot manage economies.

Enter China.

China recently created the new Shanghai gold exchange. One of the purposes behind this new gold exchange is to eventually take global price controls for monetary metal away from the Comex, and then force a global currency reset by raising the price of gold to its true or actual value.

China plans to re-price gold to near or above twice the current price. This will have a devastating effect on derivatives and ongoing use of the Comex futures market to suppress gold prices, and protect the dollar.
Based upon supply details for the Comex over the past two years, America's primary gold exchange no longer settles their contracts through the delivery of physical gold, but instead settles in cash payments or through the hedging of gold using derivatives. Subsequently, once this failure to deliver takes place, then China, through the Shanghai gold exchange, will become the default market for price discovery. At that point they will re-adjust gold to its true value, instantly causing massive chaos in the fiat currency markets and leaving the world little alternative but to implement a complete currency reset.

Since the middle of 2012 or so, the Comex has been forcing gold contracts to settle not in metal, but in cash. If you don't like it, they will ban you from the Comex. There's been very little if any settlement of gold futures contracts for two years in gold metal. They're not a gold market anymore, they're a derivative market for gold instruments. And since late September, Shanghai has been offering a gold and futures contract, and they're settling in metal.

Several economic analysts, including John Williams, Peter Schiff, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, and Gerald Celente all gave predictions earlier this year that a global currency reset event would take place in 2014, with most believing it would come before the end of summer. However, the U.S. is not on board with the rest of the world, preferring instead to seek military conflicts in order to delay the end of the petro-dollar system. Meanwhile, both Russia and China have accelerated their efforts to create infrastructures that will allow a more fluid transition for global trade once a currency reset actually takes place.

Over the past several weeks, the dollar has grown in strength while the rest of the world's currencies have been collapsing. Because of this, global accumulation of physical gold at depressed levels is running near historic highs in an attempt to hedge sovereign currencies that have depreciated from years of low interest rates and slow money velocities.

As several global financial indicators are more intertwined and threaten to bring the world into an economic crisis, China has recognized that physical gold is the ultimate catalyst to force an end to the domination of purely fiat finance, and that revaluing gold to its rightful price will have the effect of both protecting their own currency, and wresting financial control away from the West and the system of dollar hegemony.

Alan Greenspan, who served at the helm of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, recently wrote an op-ed for the Council on Foreign Relations discussing gold and its possible role in China, the world’s second-largest economy. He notes that if China converted only a “relatively modest part of its $4 trillion foreign exchange reserves into gold, the country’s currency could take on unexpected strength in today’s international financial system.”

In a world filled with fiat currencies, how important is gold’s role in the financial system? Proponents often view the precious metal as a hedge against economic chaos, while critics typically claim gold is hardly more than an unproductive rock. Interestingly, some countries appear to believe gold is quite important.

On November 30th the Swiss people will vote to return their currency to a gold standard, making their currency the first to be partially backed by gold since the US went off the gold standard in 1971. Maybe other countries will soon follow or they may be forced to by China.

Do you think the US should return to a gold standard? Is gold and/or silver a part of your Security Plan? 

It is an interesting time that we live in. Consider some of the current economic themes in households, businesses and markets throughout America:

In October 2007, U.S. stocks were hitting an all-time high, jobs were plentiful and homes were expensive. Two months later, the Great Recession began to eviscerate the economy, ultimately sucking $10 trillion out of U.S. stocks, collapsing a housing bubble and pushing the unemployment rate over 10 percent.

Seven years later, most Americans have tried to put their finances in order, many are reducing their debt and working to save more. But Americans are making a lot less money and own fewer assets, even as stocks reach new highs, according to the Federal Reserve Bank.

Housing prices are still 13 percent below 2007 levels. Fewer Americans own houses - sending rents up 16 percent, to an average of $1,100 per apartment in metro areas.

Educational loans are up, by $2,500 for the median family paying off student loans. That is prompted by tuition increases and a surge of people going back to school. Post-secondary enrollment jumped 15 percent, or 2.8 million, from 2007 to 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Jobs may be coming back, but good jobs are still scarce. More than 7 million people are working part-time jobs when they'd prefer a full-time position, 57 percent more than in 2007. And more than 3 percent of adults have left the workforce entirely since 2007, according to the U.S. labor force participation rate.

Increased government regulations have made it increasingly difficult for small businesses to grow, let alone stay in business. The uncertainty of new regulations and the differing political winds have all but removed the stability of our Republic. It was with this political stability that ideas and businesses thrived over the past 238 years. Instability causes uncertainty, hence in October we saw huge swings on Wall Street.

The Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF), an exchange-traded fund targeting banks and investment firms, had the biggest withdrawal last week since 2009 amid concern that low interest rates and market swings will hurt profits.

Investors pulled $913.4 million from the $17.5 billion ETF, whose top holdings include Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and JP Morgan Chase, a shift that turned its flow of funds negative for the year. The SPDR fund tracking financials is the largest and most-traded among the 40 U.S. listed ETFs focusing on that industry. Its shares outstanding decreased 5 percent, the biggest weekly decline in more than year.

Commercial Banks have waited for years for higher rates and more robust trading to b

oost revenue from lending and market-making. “Weaker-than-expected global growth could prompt the U.S. central bank to slow the pace of eventual interest-rate increases,” Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said. The severity of market swings last month also boosts the risk that some investment banks will incur losses while facilitating client bets, and it may slow mergers and acquisitions.

All this combined makes me wonder if we are indeed out of The Great Recession, as some say we are. Are the strategies proposed by the central banks as well as politicians designed to keep our economy down or to help it grow as they insist?

The outcomes of the elections this week will be very telling as to how Americans are feeling about the realities of what they are experiencing, day in and day out.

At times building a business can feel like outright war. Business by nature is competitive. Many business leaders have studied military strategy in order to enhance their business acumen. One of the foremost texts being Sun Tzu's ancient manuscript, “The Art of War”, written over 2500 years ago. Sun Tzu's thesis is to “win all without fighting,” or to capture the market without falling into a financial blood bath against your competition. Teachings from this book are applicable to an entrepreneurs' wins and losses on the business battlefield – the marketplace.

Sun Tzu says, “If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Sun Tzu admonishes us to study our competition in order to ascertain what gaps they are leaving in the marketplace. This is primarily intended to avoid engaging the established competition head-on, which will ultimately lead to a financial blood bath. By keeping a finger on the pulse of technologies and consumer/social changes and shifts, a good business leader can know his competition's weaknesses as well as his own. This can also allow him to focus on his strengths in order to attack the opportunities in the marketplace that are under-served by his competition.

Sun Tzu says, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war and then seek to win it.”

Sun Tzu's words underscore the importance of the lean product development methodology. This methodology focuses on creating a minimal version of the product with core features, test launching that product and the incrementally improving it from early user feedback. This proposed capital- efficient exercise conserves resources and focuses the team's attention on the product itself. Once the product is fine-tuned to a version with features guided by user feedback, then it will be ready for a larger scaled launch. In essence, this is a “win” before going to war.

Sun Tzu says, “Defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” This can be demonstrated with product failures. There are many product failures, but one that comes to mind was the “New Coke” soft drink. Clearly something went drastically wrong with this product.

Sun Tzu says, “Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.”

This phrase speaks of intensity and commitment as well as creativity. Small, passionate teams that are dedicated and focused on a common mission are extremely effective and can achieve anything, especially when they are given the lee-way they need to creatively overcome challenges and set-backs. When everyone on the team has bought into an all-or-nothing mentality and given the freedom to create, each is capable of achievement far beyond what they ever thought possible.

Sun Tzu's ideas are timeless principles that entrepreneurs and business leaders can implement in order to have clarity of their mission, their purpose, and their commitment to the success of their team's objectives. While it may feel a bit silly for business owners to liken themselves to ancient warfare generals, Sun Tzu's teachings apply and they are implemented in some manner by today's successful entrepreneurs. What rules do you use in your business to bring about success?

At times you come across an article that really makes sense. I have over the years discussed the issues of how we have too many regulations in many areas of our lives. In deed a book has been written about how every day we are breaking the laws of the land simply because there are so many we don’t know that we are breaking the law.

Many of these regulations/laws have unintended consequences that in the long run cost us as a nation far more than we thought. It seems that Congress is always in a mode of trying to fix things. And their fixes often make things worse, thus requiring another fix! It would be nice if congress only meet for a year every four years, that way the dust could settle and people could have time to learn about the laws that were passed and the economy could have the time to absorb the laws.

The current situation of you have to pass the law in order to read what is in the law, in reference to ObamaCare, is not healthy for anyone. That is like buying a plane ticket without knowing what the destination is going to be or if they will return you to the city where you started! The lack of really understanding the law and what is in it for America, is now coming to haunt us with its many unintended consequences. Stomachs are turning, like what happens after eating sour fruit!

Recently I read an article on the Wall Street Journal’s website Market Watch, by Scott W. Atlas, MD, a professor at Stanford University, he was kind enough to let me share it with you my readers. I know it is a bit long for what I normally publish, but this is worth the read, because in the end it truly affects all of us.

The US Treasury Department is currently working on new regulations to keep companies from leaving the United States, so they pay taxes here instead of other countries where taxes are lower. This is very Stalinistic or you could say, “so much for the land of the free!” Communist countries don’t let their people or companies leave their countries freely, and now it appears that we are following suit, pretty scary if you ask me.

This is simply a free market move, just as you purchase products from other countries because they can manufacture or produce some good or service less expensive, taxes are a business expense and there comes a point that businesses can’t afford to keep passing these expenses on to their customers, something has to give.

It seems to me that if we lowered taxes and competed with other countries we would get more companies that wanted to locate here in the United States, which in return would raise more taxes. But forcing companies to stay here is removing our rights as a people to participate in the free market system. Read on and please offer your opinions in the comments section.

ObamaCare's Anti-Innovation Effect

Socked by new taxes, U.S. health-care technology companies are moving R&D centers and jobs overseas.

Of the many unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act, perhaps the least noticed is its threat to innovation. Although most discussions center on the law's more immediate effects on hiring, insurance rates and access to doctors and care, attention should also be paid to its impact on U.S. research and development and health-care technology.

The overwhelming majority of the world's health-care innovation occurs in the U.S. This includes ground-breaking drug treatments, surgical procedures, medical devices, patents, diagnostics and much more. Most of the funding for that innovation—about 71% of U.S. R&D investment—comes from private industry. A recent R&D Magazine survey of industry leaders in 63 countries ranked the U.S. No. 1 in the world for health-care innovation.

But that environment is changing. According to R&D Magazine and the research firm Battelle, growth of R&D spending in the U.S. from 2012 to 2014 averaged just 2.1%, down from an average of 6% over the previous 15 years. In that same 15-year period, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, India and the European Union saw faster R&D spending growth than the U.S. China's grew on average 22% per year.

The recent slowdown in R&D spending in the U.S. is in part caused by weak economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis. But the economy's weakness itself has been exacerbated by the negative impact of new taxes and regulations under ObamaCare. According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the new health-care law will levy more than $500 billion in new taxes over its first 10 years to help pay for insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These new taxes include significant levies on key health-care industries, such as manufacturers of medical devices and drugs, and their investors.

As a result, small and large U.S. health-care technology companies are moving R&D centers and jobs overseas. The CEO of one of the largest health-care companies in America recently told me that the device tax his company paid last year exceeded his company's entire R&D budget. Already a long list of companies—including Boston Scientific , Stryker and Cook Medical—have announced job cuts and plans to open new centers for R&D, manufacturing and clinical trials overseas.

The bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration are also hindering medical-technology and drug development. According to a 2010 survey of more than 200 medical-device companies by medical professor and entrepreneur Josh Makower and his colleagues at Stanford University, delays of approvals for new medical devices are now far longer in the U.S. than in many other developed countries. In the European Union—not exactly known for cutting through red tape—it takes on average seven months to gain approval for low- to moderate-risk devices. In the U.S., FDA approval for similar devices takes on average 31 months.

The 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard found that "the gap between innovation leaders and emerging economies is rapidly narrowing." And that "although the United States will hold its lead, the country will continue to lose ground during the next decade." It goes on to say that "China, India, and Brazil will experience the strongest gains during the next 10 years."
Since the signing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, private-equity investment in new U.S. health-care startups has also diminished. Annual capital investment has decreased to $41 billion in 2013 from $61 billion in 2011, according to quarterly reports by the accounting and audit firm McGladrey LLP. Similarly, the Silicon Valley-based law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati reported in its semiannual Life Sciences Reports decreases from the first half of 2010 through the second half of 2013 in deal closings and capital raised for startups in biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and equipment, and diagnostics, with only a slight uptick in health-information systems investment.

Meanwhile, many of the best and brightest who come to the U.S. to study science, technology, engineering and math—the STEM subjects that are so crucial to innovation—are choosing to return to their home countries upon graduation. In 2008, a survey conducted by Vivek Wadhwa and his team of researchers at Duke, Harvard and the University of California found that only 6% of Indian, 10% of Chinese and 15% of European students expected to make America their permanent home. Much of this is Congress's fault. Lawmakers have been slow to increase limits on H-1B visas for high-skill foreign workers. Pressure has been brought to bear on Congress to take action, but it may be too late for an increase in the visas to have much effect in health care, given the decline in R&D spending that would make use of their talents.
What can be done to reverse these damaging trends? First, strip back the heavy tax burdens that currently inhibit innovation, starting with repealing the Affordable Care Act's $29 billion medical-device excise tax and the $80 billion tax on brand-name drugs. Change the tax code to add incentives for investment in early-stage medical technology and life-science companies, as well as for philanthropic gifts to academic institutions that promote tech entrepreneurs.

And finally, simplify processes for new device and drug approvals, so that the FDA becomes a favorable rather than an obstructionist environment for these life-saving and cost-saving discoveries. It's a tall order, especially in today's Washington. But America's health—and wealth—depend on it.

Dr. Atlas, a physician, is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

The word “entrepreneur” originates from a thirteenth-century French verb, entreprendre, meaning “to do something” or “to undertake.” By the sixteenth century, the noun form, entrepreneur, was being used to refer to someone who undertakes a business venture. The first academic use of the word by an economist was likely in 1730 by Richard Cantillon, who identified the willingness to bear the personal financial risk of a business venture as the defining characteristic of an entrepreneur.

In the early 1800s, economists Jean-Baptiste Say and John Stuart Mill further popularized the academic usage of the word “entrepreneur.” Say stressed the role of the entrepreneur in creating value by moving resources out of less productive areas and into more productive ones. Mill used the term “entrepreneur” in his popular 1848 book, Principles of Political Economy, to refer to a person who assumes both the risk and the management of a business. In this manner, Mill provided a clearer distinction than Cantillon between an entrepreneur and other business owners (such as shareholders of a corporation) who assume financial risk but do not actively participate in the day-to-day operations or management of the firm.

Successful entrepreneurs expand the size of the economic pie for everyone. Bill Gates, who, as an undergraduate at Harvard developed BASIC for the first microcomputer, went on to help found Microsoft in 1975. During the 1980s, IBM contracted with Gates to provide the operating system for its computers, a system now known as MS-DOS. Gates procured the software from another firm, essentially turning his invention into a multibillion-dollar product. Microsoft’s Office and Windows operating software now run on about 90 percent of the world’s computers. By making software that increases human productivity, Gates expanded our ability to generate output (and income), resulting in a higher standard of living for all.

Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, was another entrepreneur who touched millions of lives in a positive way. His innovations in distribution warehouse centers and inventory control allowed Wal-Mart to grow, in less than thirty years, from a single store in Arkansas to the nation’s largest retail chain. Shoppers benefit from the low prices and convenient locations that Walton’s Wal-Marts provide. Along with other entrepreneurs such as Ted Turner (CNN), Henry Ford (Ford automobiles), Ray Kroc (McDonald’s franchising), and Fred Smith (FedEx), Walton significantly improved the everyday life of billions of people all over the world.

Economists William Baumol and Peter Boettke popularized the idea that free market capitalism is significantly more productive than alternative forms of economic organization because, under capitalism, entrepreneurial effort is channeled into activities that produce wealth rather than into activities that forcibly take other people’s wealth.

Baumol and Boettke insist that entrepreneurs are present in all societies. In government-controlled societies, entrepreneurial people go into government or lobby government, and much of the government action that results — tariffs, subsidies, and regulations, for example — destroys wealth. In economies with limited governments and rule of law, entrepreneurs produce wealth.

Some entrepreneurs have some serious challenges with their businesses. While I don't condone certain businesses that are legal in our country, that does not mean they don't have specific challenges. The new cannabis  businesses in Colorado for example are having difficulty establishing banking relationships, primarily due to banking regulations. Which many would argue limits an entrepreneur's freedom.

Baumol’s and Boettke’s idea is consistent with the data and research linking economic freedom, which is a measure of the presence of good institutions to both entrepreneurship and economic growth. The recent academic research on entrepreneurship shows that, to promote entrepreneurship, government policy should focus on reforming basic institutions to create an environment in which creative individuals can flourish. That environment is one of well-defined and enforced property rights, low taxes and regulations, sound legal and monetary systems, proper contract enforcement, and limited government intervention.

Research is showing that the public policy that best fosters entrepreneurship is economic freedom. It focuses on the reasons why government programs are likely to fail, and on how improved “rules of the game” (lower and less complex taxes and regulations, more secure property rights, an unbiased judicial system, etc.) promote entrepreneurial activity. Steven Kreft and Russell Sobel (2003) showed entrepreneurial activity to be highly correlated with the “Economic Freedom Index,” a measure of the existence of such pro-market institutions.

Economists find that infusions of venture capital funding do not necessarily foster entrepreneurship. Capital is more mobile than labor, and funding naturally flows to those areas where creative and potentially profitable ideas are being generated. This means that promoting individual entrepreneurs is more important for economic development policy than is attracting venture capital at the initial stages. While funding can increase the odds of new business survival, it does not create new ideas. Funding follows ideas, not vice versa.

There are many entrepreneurship quotes that are relevant and important to every entrepreneur’s journey. Here are a few favorites:

It’s fine to celebrate success but it’s more important to heed the lessons of failure.– Bill Gates

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.– Thomas Edison

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.– Winston Churchill

It’s not about the ideas. It’s about making the ideas happen.– Scott Belsky

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.– Guy Kawasaki

Timing, perseverance, and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success. — Biz Stone

No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life – and your own skin – every day of the week.– Spencer Fry

See things in the present, even if they are in the future.– Larry Ellison

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.– Walt Disney

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.– Henry Ford

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success. — John D. Rockefeller

Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further. — JP Morgan