Crisis Creates Opportunity: Buy When Blood Runs

“After the administration began to prepare for war in the wake of the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries in the spring of 1940, Kaiser quickly moved from domestic concerns to war production. Kaiser also offered the administration alternative entrants in industries that hesitated to increase production; his belief in production as the "Fifth Freedom" fit both prewar and wartime administration needs. By the time Kaiser and Franklin D. Roosevelt developed a personal relationship during the war, the president appeared sympathetic to Kaiser's goals for a simple reason: they coincided with Roosevelt's.”

“In the summer of 1942, "fabulous" Henry J. Kaiser burst like a comet across the national sky. His West Coast shipyards had performed production miracles during the dark days of America's first six months in World War II, a time when merchant shipping across the Atlantic, a target of German submarines, was deemed the most crucial bottleneck to overcome for America's war effort. 1 He had made headlines for his magnesium enterprise and for the steel plant he was about to build, both of which provided the "arsenal of Democracy" with a West Coast alternative to sluggish East Coast producers. Kaiser was introduced at the National Press Club in July as "the modern”

“"Out of crisis comes opportunity," Shelby remembers him saying. "A down market lets you buy more shares in great companies at favorable prices. If you know what you're doing, you'll make most of your money from these periods. You just won't realize it until much later."”

“In the savings and loan (S&L) debacle of the late 1980s,he looked for an investment angle. In his "Crisis Creates Opportunity" mode, he found an obvious beneficiary in Fannie Mae, a buyer and processor of home mortgages.In cities and towns across America, the same buccaneer spirit that inspired corporate raiders bankrupted hundreds of local thrifts.”