Thomas Jefferson - Buster 1988 - Niall Ferguson TV - Bill Still TV - The Fall of Lehman Brothers TV - Ian R Crane - William Shakespeare - Benjamin Franklin - Artemus Ward - Addison H Hallock - Abraham Lincoln - Deuteronomy 15:6 - Proverbs 22:7 - Ecclesiasticus 19:1 - Noam Chomsky - Dirty Money 2018 - Greece with Simon Reeve TV - Alan Greenspan - The 2000s: The Decade We Saw It All TV - Robert Peston TV - Dave Fishwick: Loan Ranger TV -
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution – taking from government their power of borrowing. Thomas Jefferson
I do borrow from banks. I mean that is my job. Buster 1988 starring Phil Collins & Julie Walters & Sheila Hancock & Larry Lamb & Stephanie Lawrence & Ellie Beaven & Ralph Brown & Christopher Ellison & Martin Jarvis & Anthony Quayle et al, director David Green, Buster
Our entire civilisation is based on the lending and borrowing of money. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money e1: Dreams of Avarice, Channel 4 2008
The Hindu or Arabic numerals made all kinds of calculation easier. ibid.
For the first time money lending had evolved into banking. ibid.
In our time we’ve witnessed the zenith of global finance. In 2006 the world’s total economic output was worth around $47 trillion. The total value of stock and bond markets was roughly $119 trillion. More than twice the size. And the amount outstanding of the strange new financial life-form known as derivatives was $473 trillion. Ten times larger ... This is the story of financial globalisation. Professor Niall Ferguson, Ascent of Money: Chimerica, 2010
According to [George] Soros’s Theory of Reflexivity, financial markets can’t possibly be perfectly efficient much less rational ... His biggest coups came from being right about losers not winners. And the greatest of these was among the most momentous speculative hits in all of financial history. On September 16th 1992 with the British £ in big trouble I watched as Soros put out a contract on the Bank of England ... So sure was he that the £ would drop that he bet ten billion dollars. ibid.
The Nobel Prize in Economics. It seemed as if Intellect had triumphed over Intuition. As if rocket science had taken over from risk-taking. Equipped with their magical black box, the partners in LTCM seemed poised to make money far beyond the wildest imaginings of even George Soros. And then in the summer of 1998 when every self-respecting hedge-fund manager should have been playing with his yacht something happened that threatened to blow the lid right off the Nobel Prize winner’s black box: Reality started to misbehave ... On Monday August 17th 1998 a giant asteroid smashed into Planet Finance. ibid.
The only chance of survival was to find a White Knight to rescue them. And the most powerful Knight in town was none other than George Soros. It was the ultimate humiliation: the Quants from Planet Finance begging for a bail-out from the Prophet of Irrational Unquantifiable Reflexivity ... Fear that Long Term’s failure could trigger a general financial meltdown, the New York Federal Reserve hastily brokered a multi-billion-dollar bailout by fourteen Wall Street banks. ibid.
The ascent of money has seldom been smooth. Time and again it’s been punctuated by big painful crises. ibid.
American borrowers have come to rely on Chinese savers, a symbiotic relationship between China and America that I call Chimerica. ibid.
So enormous have Chinese saving become in recent years they’ve enabled globalisation to do the most almighty U-turn. Previously, it was the rich English speakers who leant money to the poor Asian periphery. But now it’s the Chinese who are lending money to the Americans. Welcome to the strange new hybrid country of China and America – I call it Chimerica. ibid.
The People’s republic of China has become banker to the United States of America. ibid.
What starts with competition for Olympic medals could end in a battle over dollars if the Chinese decide one day to cut off their credit line to the American empire. Maybe as it name suggests Chimerica is nothing more than a chimera ... The really big crises come just seldom enough to be beyond the living memory of the people who run today’s companies, banks and funds. ibid.
The Ascent of Money has been one of the key factors in human progress, an extraordinary story of innovation, intermediation and integration that has done as much as anything to help people escape from the drudgery of subsistence agriculture. And yet Planet Finance can never quite escape from the gravitational force of Planet Earth. Because the Quants can never take full account of the human factor – our tendency to underestimate the probability of black swans. Our propensity to veer from euphoria to despondency. Our chronic inability to learn from History. ibid.
It’s always in the politician’s benefit to borrow. PSTV.tv – Bill Still Interview
It [Lehman] borrowed more and more money ... It’s called leverage. The Fall of Lehman Brothers, BBC
Why do you think that the Banks aren’t lending money despite a one trillion pound bailout? Simple. The only people and businesses that need money right now are those who are already struggling to make the repayments on their outstanding borrowing! Would you lend another £1000 to someone that you knew had no possible means to repay the £1000 that you had already lent them? Perhaps, but only if you never expected to see any of it ever again! Consequently, the Banks know that if they are forced to create more ‘Toxic Debt’, the current level of ‘financial crisis’ will seem like ‘chump change’. Ian R Crane, Stepping Through Financial Fear; viz website
I can find no remedy for this consumption of the purse. Borrowing only lingers and lingers it out but the disease is incurable. William Shakespeare, Henry IV II, Globe Theatre Sky Arts 2012; II ii 217-219, Sir John to Page
Neither a borrower nor a lender be. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I iii 75, Polonius to Laertes
He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing. Benjamin Franklin
Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with. Artemus Ward, Artemus Ward in London, 1867
Before borrowing from a friend, decide which you need more. Addison H Hallock
An individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon finds his original means devoured by interest. And next, no-one left to borrow from. So must it be with a new government. Abraham Lincoln
For the Lord thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. Deuteronomy 15:6
The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. Proverbs 22:7
Be not a beggar by banqueting upon borrowing. Ecclesiasticus 19:1
Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble. George Washington
The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects. Noam Chomsky
‘There are millions who are victims of this predatory lending.’ Dirty Money II: Payday, Netflix 2018
‘The online part of payday lending was like a ten billion dollars a year business.’ ibid.
‘You’re really targeting the most vulnerable people out there.’ ibid.
In February 2016 Scott Tucker and his general counsel Tim Muir were indicted on federal criminal charges for operating an unlawful internet payday lending enterprise. ibid. caption
Payday Loan Mogul’s $1.3 billion judgment is record FTC penalty. ibid. newspaper article
Greece didn’t actually meet the requirements of membership of the Euro but Europe turned a blind eye … Once inside the Euro, Greece was able to borrow money at very low rates … The country went a bit bonkers. Greece with Simon Reeve I, BBC 2018
There is a limit to how much the United States Treasury can borrow. Alan Greenspan
Lehman Brothers: they borrow a staggering 44 times the amount they actually own. The 2000s: The Decade We Saw It All IV
Fortunes are being accumulated in the UK on a scale we haven’t seen for a hundred years. We’ve been told that the way the super-rich creates wealth makes all of us, well, a bit better off. But does it? This time around they’ve used new and different financial techniques to enrich themselves. Robert Peston, Super Rich: The Greed Game, BBC 2008
We are picking up the bill in a global greed game. ibid.
London is the capital of capital. ibid.
They’ve created ghettos of fabulously expensive property. ibid.
[Alan] Greenspan slashed rates to just 1%, and the supply of credit soared. ibid.
Since 1997 Labour has tried to make the United Kingdom as a land fit for the super-rich. ibid.
By the start of the twenty-first century these two factors – the power of leverage and low taxes for enterprise – gave birth to a new set of business superpowers; among them are the private equity money who borrow huge sums of money to buy whole companies. ibid.
Colossal funds have been accumulated by hedge fund managers. ibid.
The pay structure they devised: they wrote the rules of the greed game so they couldn’t lose. ibid.
Wall Street banks started by selling good quality loans to raise money and then looked at what else would be sold. ibid.
There was a torrent of cash for subprime loans thanks to a banking breakthrough called Structured Finance. ibid.
Most of the world’s big banks ... were stampeding to make profits by turning risky subprime loans into supposedly high quality investments. ibid.
More of the borrowers defaulted than they expected. ibid.
Northern Rock went to the brink of insolvency because its business was dependent on raising money by selling its mortgages to international lenders. ibid.
There are still plenty of opportunities for the new super-rich to increase their fortunes. ibid.