Clergyman's

Never penalize those who work for us for mistakes or reward them for being right about markets. It will go to their heads, is counterproductive and, in any event, material compensation will not correlate with their ability to predict the future next time.
- Eugene Rotberg

A war takes place; an earthquake occurs; a flood of a magnitude not seen in a hundred years washes over the land; a cartel falls apart; oil prices quadruple; tax laws change, and the market in which you had an open position, or even hedged, moves in a magnitude not only unforeseen, but totally outside past models. They always do. You are in trouble.
- Eugene Rotberg

Try to understand why a transaction makes sense to your counterparty. . . .
- Eugene Rotberg

Ignore accounting conventions. They are not useful risk management tools; they are designed to make our lives easier and comfortable.
- Eugene Rotberg

Freud, Galileo and Darwin told us, at different times and in different ways, that we are not the center of the universe; that we do not have control; that we do not fully understand our motivations; that we are not all that special. They did not have an easy time of it—for each society wants to believe that it can exercise control over its own destiny and over others. I suspect their findings apply not just to science or personal behavior, but to the way power and leverage can be exercised by nation states. Yours, I suspect, will be the first generation which will have to achieve results with neither military nor economic predominance—no matter where you sit.
- Eugene Rotberg

Banks are unprofitable because they make too many bad loans and their good loans have little profit in them. They also have the dubious advantage of an awful set of accounting conventions—“a rolling loan gathers no loss”—that permits them to mask their mistakes and hold assets without marking their value to market. Spreads are narrow, costs are high and there is too much reliance on insured deposits, with the accompanying incentive to take risks with someone else's money.
- Eugene Rotberg

Show some humility. . . .
- Eugene Rotberg