Joseph's "Just My Thoughts"

When an officer informed Prussian Friedrich the Great that there were discrepancies between the book and the actual battle, Friedrich famously replied, “We have a mule that has fought 60 times in our army, yet it remains just a mule.” In response to an officer’s query about becoming a great strategist, Napoleon stated that his only way was to study the history of warfare. Lincoln admitted that everything he sought to understand was contained in a book, and Edison read through the entire collection from the Detroit Library. When asked about the key to his success, Warren Buffett declared that it was consistent reading. Don’t be misled into thinking that experiences outweigh the value of reading. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”

A bank trades collateral by holding debt called savings and selling bonds known as loans. Customer deposits are not bank money and must be returned to the customer as the bank’s debts. These debts lure customers; the bank lends money to them to recreate bonds with the customers’ debts. At this point, there is “collateral (mortgage)” to prevent the risk of bankruptcy between bonds and debts. In other words, banks do not possess the collateral; they merely govern it. The primary instrument of control is their bonds. In a way, banks tend not to be places where they make money with their own possessions, but rather conduct business as if it were their own with others’ collateral. Therefore, because banks need to know the value of secured collateral, the most accurate investigation of real estate and valuable gem information is key to banking. This is the similarity between a bank and a library that accumulates information. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”