This issue, which is backed by ultra-risky second-mortgage loans, contains all the elements that facilitated the housing bubble and bust. It’s got speculators searching for quick gains in hot housing markets; it's got loans that seem to have been made with little or no serious analysis by lenders; and finally, it’s got Wall Street, which churned out mortgage ‘product’ because buyers wanted it. As they say on the Street, When the ducks quack, feed them.
Alas, almost everyone involved in this duck-feeding deal has had a foul experience. Less than 18 months after the issue was floated, a sixth of the borrowers had already defaulted on their loans. Investors who paid face value for these securities – they were looking for slightly more interest than they’d get on equivalent bonds – have suffered heavy losses. Allan Sloan, Fortune Magazine online 16th October 2007 article, ‘House of Junk: The Deal’
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. Lord Acton
The World’s Sleaziest Bank: Exclusive: How BCCI became a one-stop shopping centre for criminals and spies. Time magazine front cover
There’s one thing that ties these points together: the cartel, AIG, the CIA, the Contras, Noriega – one thing connects them all: the BCCI: the Bank of Credit & Commerce International. Or for our discussion today, the grand-daddy of all money-laundering scams. The BCCI was and remains the largest instance of fraud and bankruptcy in global history ... A principle shareholder of the BCCI is a guy named Khalid bin Mahfouz ... whose other claim to fame is his dubious investment in a company called Harkin in the late 80s. The man with a 20% stake in the largest money laundering operation the world has ever seen saved our president’s business career. Who Killed John O’Neill?
Bin Laden Linked To BCCI. CNN online Europe 26th September 2001
BCCI: It’s a shadowy international bank linked to terrorists, drug runners and dictators. US News report, cited Invisible Empire
Shocking disclosures of low standards in high places. Ferdinand Pecora
Regulations of derivatives transactions that are privately regulated by professionals is unnecessary. Alan Greenspan, 24th July 1998
The City is far more dishonest than anything I did before. The biggest organised crime in Britain was performed by the government stealing something the British people already owned and selling it back to them. Charlie Richardson, London gangsta, worked in City on release from Prison 1984
If however a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the reach, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer. John Maynard Keynes
How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult? John Maynard Keynes
It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. Henry Ford
The large banking interests were deeply interested in the world war because of the wide opportunities for large profits. William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State
The Bank hath the benefit of interest on all monies which it creates out of nothing. William Paterson, Bank of England
The effects of the catastrophic crash on Wall Street rippled out across America ... In 1931 over two thousand banks failed. 1929: The Great Crash, BBC 2009
The banks can and do create money, and they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. Richard McKenna
Very soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a national system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a charge-back for our fiat paper currency. Every American will be forced to register or suffer being unable to work and earn a living. They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges. They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two should figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor to this fraud which we will call ‘Social Insurance’. Without realizing it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur and in this manner, every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and, we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America. Edward Mandell House, founder of Council on Foreign Relations & promoter of League of Nations, to Woodrow Wilson 1913
US Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion Dollars On Bailout Programs. Bloomberg article 9th February 2009, Pittman & Ivry
The government works for a private bank, and the private bank works for its owners – the true masters. Catherine Austin Fitts, Assistant Secretary of Housing
These international bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which control the invisible government. Theodore Roosevelt
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain. Mark Twain
I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected. John Danforth former US ambassador to UN & Republican senator
Whether it is really desirable to have such a thing as a Lender of Last Resort: the correct position appears to me that every single bank should be responsible for its own debts and contractual obligations. And if banks through imprudent policy then go bankrupt this should not be considered a bad thing but in fact considered to be a magnificent thing because bankruptcies, the danger of bankruptcies, is precisely what makes banks adhere to its own policies. Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Obama Regulatory Reform Plan officially establishes banking dictatorship in the United States ... The Bank of England, the banks in Europe, the banks in Japan, are all owned by the same people and are all announcing – new powers for the Bank of England! New powers for the Bank of Japan! New powers for the Bundesbank! New Powers! And it’s all for the International Bank of Settlements, IMF, World Bank ... the New World Bank you’ll pay your taxes to ... It’s really happening now! Alex Jones, The Ultimate Tyranny
Folks are starting to find out who the real enemy is: off-shore private banking corporations that have engaged in a hostile corporate takeover of the United States and almost every other nation on the planet. And the private Federal Reserve is their beach-head here in the United States. Alex Jones
Ask about our special scheme for students or sons of famous prime ministers with dealings abroad. Spitting Image s1e3, ITV 1984
I hate banks. They do nothing positive for anybody except take care of themselves. They’re first in with their fees and first out when there’s trouble. Earl Warren
The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. Helen Keller
Bank failures are caused by depositors who don’t deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement. Dan Quayle