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>Retaining control means knowing when to say no to taking on more than you actually need.

Isn't the lesson the opposite though? When easy funding is available, take on more funding than you need and then don't spend it, so that you have plenty of reserve when things get tight.

There’s a timing problem with this approach, when you get the money vs when the investor expects a return. The investor usually wants clear indications of what you’re doing with the cash to increase their investment. Holding it generally doesn’t sit well with investors as they could have given it to someone who would be doing things with it.

I assume that OP meant saying no to taking on more expenses / ongoing obligations than you need, not funding reserves.

> And yet, the news of the day put a rain cloud over their heads and they started making emotionally-fueled decisions about tightening up on this investment, or that investment...

I remember having read that at one moment in late September 2008 the US Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson had kneeled in front of a room of big-bank CEOs begging them to do I don’t remember exactly what (I’m on mobile, too lazy to look for the exact reference). Also, the money market rates had dropped bellow 0% for the first time in recorded modern capitalist memory, an event that lots of economists had said that it wouldn’t ever happen. These are the two main apocalyptic-like events that I remember back from those days, there were many others, and I’d say that we were pretty damn close to a very deep and ugly financial black hole. As such I don’t blame those people who took the safe way out back in those days, I mean, I’m sure there were also people who hang on to their investments back in 1930 or 1931 thinking that the worse was over but we don’t read any happy stories about them because most probably there were none.

HBO's "Too Big to Fail" has that moment with Paulson – and a lot of great actors in it. Really captures the trauma of that period.

Fair point – I was recalling the time after the 'crisis' and what we'd now call the bottom / beginning of the recovery. Probably early 2009.

> HBO's "Too Big to Fail" has that moment with Paulson – and a lot of great actors in it. Really captures the trauma of that period.

Thanks, I’ll give it a shot. Yeah, those were some crazy times, I’m glad that we’re here writing about the winners, the alternative was much worse.

>I mean, I’m sure there were also people who hang on to their investments back in 1930 or 1931 thinking that the worse was over

C'mon, you just had to wait a few years: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/your-money/stocks-and-bon... (note when that was published! Near the low point of the 2008 stock market; Mar 5 2009 was the low point for the Dow.)

I know about that 1936 rebound (that was followed by a mini-recession soon after, if I’m not mistaken) but I think a lot of wealth had “evaporated” in the preceding 6-7 years and a lot of former wealthy people had become bankrupt, it was not that easy to just “hold on” for a few more years.

Later edit: You can also make the case that the 1929 crash paved the way for an entire class of investors to be physically wiped out about 10 years later, I’m talking about how that economic crisis helped Hitler come to power and about the subsequent physical elimination of most of the European Jews. All I’m saying is that sometimes the apocalyptic estimations really do become true.

It's probably not what you meant, but just to clarify: just because Nazis depicted the Jews as rich doesn't make them investors.

Most of the European Jews who were murdered were low- to middle-class. The so-called Yiddishland was largely composed of dirt-poor farmers, not investors.

sure, but there were plenty of well-to-do jews whose wealth was expropriated and were murdered.

> Most of the European Jews who were murdered were low- to middle-class.

Yeah, I know that, I'm particularly interested by the history of shepherd Jews that used to live in the region of Maramures (in present-day North-Western Romania), I think they were one of the only such Jewish communities in the whole of Europe. That's not that much written about them, apart from a few blog-posts like this one: https://frgheorghe.wordpress.com/strabunicul-meu-a-fost-evre... (in Romanian, but the photos are unique), but I find their way of living extraordinary nonetheless. Of course that they were all wiped out in 1944.

> I have friends in the music industry, and there's been a few instances of people getting these really big advances. Then come the big, expensive sushi dinners, flashy parties, etc. It looks like the record company is picking up the check... but not really. The artist is on the hook.

What is reasonably big? Any artist with half a brain would put that entire cheque into other investments.

Most musicians don't come from money and most schools don't teach basic finance. Most people blow windfalls of cash.

Early? Read The Big Short and you'll change your opinion about when that crisis started.

I’ve read the Big Short, not sure I get your point?