There are three words that a politician or news media will never use ... What is the total Income? Gross receipts. Number two: What are the total Investments? Number three: What is the net Worth? Walter Burien, interview Alex Jones, Comprehensive Annual Finance Reports Exposed
I realise that there are some businessmen who feel only they want to be left alone. That government and politics are none of their affairs. That the balance sheet and profit rate of their own corporation are of more importance than the worldwide balance of power or the nationwide rate of unemployment. But I hope it’s not rushing the season to recall to you the passage from Dicken’s Christmas Carol in which Ebenezer Scrooge is terrified by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley. And Scrooge appalled by Marley's story of ceaseless wandering cries out, ‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob!’ And the ghost of Marley is laid bound by a chain of ledger books and cash boxes replied, ‘Business? Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.’
Members and guests of the Foreign Estate Chamber of Business, whether we work in the White House or the State House or in a house of industry or commerce, mankind is our business. And if we work in harmony, if we understand the problems of each other, and the responsibilities each of us bears, then surely the business of mankind will prosper. And your children and mine will move ahead in a secure world and one in which there is opportunity for them all. John F Kennedy
The market matches demand and supply better than the planners do. It responds more easily to changing fashions and needs. It is rather good at getting rid of unsuccessful enterprises. Shirley Williams, Politics is for People
There’s no business like show business. Irving Berlin (Israel Baline), 1888-1989, American songwriter, from Annie Get Your Gun, 1946
The fundamental business of the country – that is production and distribution of commodities – is on a sound and prosperous basis. Herbert Hoover
I believe and I have always believed and I always will believe in private enterprise has the backbone of the economic well-being of the United States. People of America have no quarrel with business; they insist only that the power of concentrated wealth shall not be abused. Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933
A tyrannical system of looters. Alex Jones
Business was his aversion; pleasure was his business. Maria Edgeworth, 1767-1849, Anglo-Irish novelist
I think that business practices would improve immeasurably if they were guided by ‘feminine’ principles – qualities like love and care and intuition. Anita Roddick, Body and Soul, 1991
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. Professor Noam Chomsky, public address on New World Order
Politics and ideology are largely bounded by the consensus of the business community. On critical issues there is a tactical debate within the mainstream, but questions of principle rarely arise. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy p59
In Italy too, US labor leaders, primarily from the AFL, played an active role in splitting and weakening the labor movement, and inducing workers to accept austerity measures while employers reaped rich profits. In France, the AFL had broken dock strikes by importing Italian scab labor paid by US businesses. The State Department called on the Federation’s leadership to exercise their talents in union-busting in Italy as well, and they were happy to oblige. The business sector, formerly discredited by its association with Italian Fascism, undertook a vigorous class war with renewed confidence. The end result was the subordination of the working class and the poor to traditional rulers. ibid.
The United States happens to have a highly class conscious business community which is committed to fighting a continuous and very bitter class war. Noam Chomsky, lecture Portland Oregon October 2009, ‘When Elites Fail’, Youtube
They gain control of the world by bankrupting their own businesses. The Illuminati owns 99.9% of the stores you walk into, the shops and the gas stations you go to. And they are going to destroy us on purpose. And the idea of taking over is to bankrupt the whole world where nothing is of any value and the currency doesn’t exist anywhere, and then come back and solve all the problems. John Todd
There are over three hundred people who die – who are killed – at work each year. 300 people killed at work each year and we haven’t got a proper law to deal with that. And this is a class issue. Because if it was three hundred chief executives or three hundred directors dying in industrial accidents each year ... you can guarantee the law would change like that. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s6e3: Industrial Killing, Channel 4 2002
Today in Britain the government spends more than all private individuals and companies put together. Martin Durkin, Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story, Channel 4 2010
Today in Britain the public sector is bigger than the private sector. ibid.
In the next five years annual government spending will climb from £697 billion to £757 billion. ibid.
We now have a national debt of £4.8 trillion. ibid.
Counted out in £50 notes our national debt would form a stack no less than 6,561 miles. Or to put it another way, if we sold off all the houses and flats in the whole of the UK, we would still be the best part of a trillion pounds short of paying our debt. ibid.
British governments have been steadily debasing the currency or printing money for decades through the deliberate expansion of credit. ibid.
It’s very much in the interests of politicians to spend money. ibid.
The idea that public spending will stimulate growth is the biggest myth of the twentieth century and is the cause of Britain’s economic decline. ibid.
What do they all do? ibid.
The idea that we need state monopolies in order to look after the poor is obviously untrue. ibid.
You cannot be a success in any business without believing that it is the greatest business in the world ... You have to put your heart in the business and the business in your heart. Thomas Watson
Welcome to the world of money. Bread. Cash. Dosh. Dough. Loot. Lucre. Moolah. Readies. The Wherewithal. Call it what you like – money can make us or break us. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money e1: Dreams of Avarice, Channel 4 2008
How on earth could a little local difficulty with subprime mortgages in the United States unleash an economic tsunami big enough to obliterate some of Wall Street’s most illustrious names, to force nationalisations of banks on both sides of the Atlantic and to bring the entire world economy to the very brink of recession if not downright depression? ibid.
The ascent of money has been an indispensable part of the ascent of man. ibid.
The US stock of money is now $8.7 trillion. ibid.
This hedge fund paid George Soros a cool $2.4 billion ibid.
Money is only worth what other people will give in exchange for it. ibid.
Money is about trust. ibid.
Our entire civilisation is based on the lending and borrowing of money. ibid.
The Hindu or Arabic numerals made all kinds of calculation easier. ibid.
For the first time money lending had evolved into banking. ibid.
The big mystery is why the world’s most successful capitalist economy is based on a foundation of more or less painless economic failure. ibid.
From 1996 to 2006 there were between one and two million bankruptcy cases a year in the United States. ibid.
In today’s world real power lies in the hands of an elite group of anonymous men in open-plan offices. The men who control the world’s bond market … Bonds are the magical link between the world of high finance and the world of political power. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money e2: Human Bondage
After the rise of banks the birth of the bond market was the next big revolution in the history of finance. It created a whole new way for governments to borrow money. ibid.
There are bonds out there worth around $85 trillion. ibid.
Between around 1810 and 1836 the five sons of Meyer Amschel Rothschild rose from the obscurity of the Frankfurt ghetto to attain a position of unequalled power in international finance. ibid.
The South’s idea was to use cotton as collateral to back its bonds. ibid.
By June 1989 inflation in Argentina had reached a monthly rate of 100%. ibid.