On almost every front, banks can’t be trusted. Gillian Tett, assistant editor Financial Times
Either way the public loses and the bankers do well, and that’s an historical system. Nouriel Roubini, New York University
They didn’t know what they were doing. And we, not them, to a large extent, are paying the price for that. Alistair Darling
The regulators didn’t do their job. Eliot Spitzer
I didn’t know what credit default swaps are. I’m a little bit old-fashioned. George Soros
What really matters is the fact that the major institutions in society are under totalitarian control. After all, what’s a corporation? A corporation is just a tyrannical system, one of the most tyrannical systems that humans have ever devised. They’ve been given extraordinary rights by the courts, not by legislation early in this century. Like the multilateral agreement. They’ve been given the rights of states. They’re basically unaccountable to the public ... They’ve been given the rights of free speech which is insane ... They control the information system. The media ... The major decisions that affect what happens in the economy and social life are made behind closed doors. Very little public accountability ... Alliance capitalism. Noam Chomsky, public address on New World Order
Fiscal policy constitutes a long-term shift of resources to the wealthy. The ‘staggering’ costs discussed by the federal auditors will be paid by the poor and the working class who have left out of the consumption binge that economists now blame for the clouds on the horizon, just as the taxpayer is called upon to bail out speculators hoping to profit from deregulation of the Savings and Loans institutions, and probably, before too long, the banks that reaped enormous profits by lending to the wealthy classes and neo-Nazi military rulers who took over much of Latin America with US backing from the early 1960s. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
There also appear to have been no serious efforts to pursue the public allegations by cartel money-launderers about their contacts with major US banks. ibid.
A lot of the protests are against the bailout, the massive bailout … They are more powerful than they were before. The big banks are bigger than they were. The government insurance policy – the Too Big to Fail Insurance Policy – is guaranteeing them that they can continue doing exactly what they were doing which tanked the economy. Noam Chomsky, Who Controls the World? Youtube 1.29.57, Link TV June 2009
The financial institutions that triggered the recent crash were free to do anything it seems except fail. Masters of Money II: Hayek, BBC 2012
Central banks are the cause of many of capitalism’s problems, not the solution. ibid.
The bank – the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants – insists – must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You’ve scrabbled at it long enough, God knows. ibid.
Britain who had once been the world’s banker, we were now the world’s single biggest debtor nation ... He [Attlee] turned to the economist John Maynard Keynes and sent him to Washington ... No gift but a loan of just under four billion dollars, with interest, just half of what he thought was vital ... The last of that loan was finally paid off December 2006. Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, BBC 2007
Only commercial banks and trust companies can lend money that they manufacture by lending it. Professor Irving Fisher, 100% Money, 1935
The banks have made a killing in the decade of the ’80s. They’ve been crying the whole time but not only the banks but the public institutions have received a total of over $1.3 trillion ... And the reward the debtor countries have received for paying their creditors $1.3 trillion in the last ten years is to be 60% more in debt than they were in 1982. So if there is no change, this can go on for ever. Dr Susan George, author The Debt Boomerang
Some day people soon are going to rise up and kill bankers. Poor bankers, they’re not feeling the love these days. Bill Maher: But I’m Not Wrong, Sky Comedy 2010
Given that most countries do have enough resources to provide for their people, why should they have to tolerate a system that forces parents to watch their children die slowly? ... Indeed, why should the burden of debt fall to those least responsible for it? At the other end of the scale, why should British high street banks get tax relief of more than a billion pounds just in case loans are not paid back. That amount of money would immunise four hundred million children against preventable disease. Above all, why should the lives of ordinary people be controlled by a few who are themselves unaccountable, and whose decisions and judgments are dictated by a belief that economics is meant not to serve people but as some kind of holy writ requiring regular offerings, even blood sacrifices to a god called The Bottom Line. The debts of poor countries amounts to less than five percent of the loans of commercial banks. If the debt was cancelled unconditionally the banks would hardly know the difference. John Pilger, War By Other Means, ITV 1992
Commercial banks create chequebook money whenever they grant a loan simply by adding new account dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower’s IOU. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, I Bet You Thought p19
Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing. Ralph M Hawtrey
They build nothing other than profits. They’re junkies. They’re addicts ... They can’t get enough ... Billionaire bonuses for what? ... Bigger than the GDPs of many nations ... Here’s more money, junkey. Celente & Schiff & Paul & Faber & Rogers & Woods, MeltUp: The Beginning of a US Currency Crisis, 2010
In fact this is precisely the logic on which the Bank of England – the first successful modern central bank – was originally founded. In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king. In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes. What this meant in practice was they had the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king now owed them to any inhabitant of the kingdom willing to borrow from them, or willing to deposit their own money in the bank – in effect, to circulate or ‘monetize’ the newly created royal debt. This was a great deal for the bankers (they got to charge the king 8 percent annual interest for the original loan and simultaneously charge interest on the same money to the clients who borrowed it), but it only worked as long as the original loan remained outstanding. To this day, this loan has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it ever were, the entire monetary system of Great Britain would cease to exist. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
The J P Morgans – they were crooks and killers too. The Sopranos s2e9: From Where to Eternity, Tony, HBO 2000
Now they’re gone, they’re not to be thought of again. This is your opportunity. Margin Call 2011 starring Paul Bettany & Demi Moore & Kevin Spacey & Jeremy Irons & Zachary Quinto & Penn Badgley & Simon Baker & Stanley Tucci & Mary McDonnell & Ashley Williams et al, director J C Chandor, team pep talk
Over the last thirty six to forty months the firm has begun packaging new MBS products that combine several different tranches of grading classification in one tradable security. ibid. Sullivan
It’s just money. It’s made up. ibid. Irons
What Mr Rothschild had discovered was the basic principle of power, influence, and control over people as applied to economics. That principle is, When you assume the appearance of power, people soon give it to you.
Mr Rothschild had discovered that currency or deposit loan accounts had the required appearance of power that could be used to induce people (inductance, with people corresponding to a magnetic field) into surrendering their real wealth in exchange for a promise of greater wealth (instead of real compensation). They would put up real collateral in exchange for a loan of promissory notes. Mr Rothschild found that he could issue more notes than he had backing for, so long as he had someone’s stock of gold as a persuader to show his customers.
Mr Rothschild loaned his promissory notes to individuals and to governments. These would create overconfidence. Then he would make money scarce, tighten control of the system, and collect the collateral through the obligation of contracts. The cycle was then repeated. These pressures could be used to ignite a war. Then he would control the availability of currency to determine who would win the war. That government which agreed to give him control of its economic system got his support.