We must go forward cautiously and consolidate each acquired position, because already the inferior social stratum of society is giving unceasing signs of agitation ... When through the law’s intervention the common people shall have lost their homes, they will be more easy to control and more easy to govern, and they shall not be able to resist the strong hand of the government acting in accordance with ... the control of the leaders of finance. United States Bankers Magazine 1892
By dividing the electorate this way we’ll be able to have them spend their energies at struggling amongst themselves on questions that for us have no importance whatsoever. ibid.
Who creates new money? How does new money get into the economy? And what is debt really being used for? RichPlanet TV: The Monetary System with Ian Crane
Fractional banking: the game-plan right from the outset is to asset strip ... You put the money in which is owed back to you ... with interest. ibid.
North Dakota today is the only state in the United States of America that has a Bank of North Dakota that is owned by the people of North Dakota. ibid.
Get yourself out of debt. Do whatever it takes. Get yourself out of debt ... If like most people you feel the pressure of being in debt, get out of it ... If you’ve got credit cards, cut ’em up! ... Cut ’em up! Get rid of ’em. Don’t feed the system. Don’t feed the system. Work in cash as much as possible, and don’t use these loyalty cards – it’s all geared towards trying to create the social conditioning where they monitor behaviour; they’ve got the information going into the database – just think about what’s occurring. Ian R Crane, New World Order lecture Liverpool 2008
The countries that are regarded as the Axis of Evil all have one thing in common: they are all free of debt from the World Bank. Ian R Crane, presentation History Cannot Be Permanently Falsified
National debt mountains can be extinguished for the universal benefit of us all by creating streams of positive financial liquidity in the hands of the people instead of the streams of negative debt that have been placed on the shoulders of national governments and which are being paid for by ever increasing taxes. It is a statement of fact that these debt mountains were entirely unnecessary and exist simply because the political elite in national governments have been persuaded – some would say bribed – to hand over the control of their nation’s money to the international banking cartel. Richard D Hall, RichPlanet online 14th July 2012
I investigate how globalisation went badly wrong. Robert Peston, The Party’s Over: How the West Went Bust I, BBC 2011
Our long boom was founded on a dangerous lie. ibid.
Big Bang allowed big international banks to buy up stock. ibid.
The gap between the very richest and the very poorest widened at a pace we hadn’t seen since the Victorian era. ibid.
The financial revolution spawned a debt revolution. ibid.
The Chinese consume half as much as we do relative to the size of their economy. They save much much more. ibid.
Western banks borrowed recklessly to lend to us. ibid.
The indebtedness of governments exploded. ibid.
The crash of 2008 began to topple an unbalanced global economic system. ibid.
Regulators failed to stem reckless lending by banks, and central bankers kept interest rates far too low. ibid.
There can be no return to debt-fuelled capitalism in the West. ibid.
How in Britain are we going to pay our way in this challenging new world? Robert Peston, The Party’s Over: How the West Went Bust II
Is twenty-first century austerity a journey back into our past? ibid.
Our personal debts remain dangerously large. ibid.
Has financial services become too big? ibid.
We racked up big debts to pay for all that lovely stuff ... Our love affair with shopping became a dangerous addiction. Robert Peston Goes Shopping II, BBC 2015
The amount of debt your country carries is a terrible vulnerability. Too Big to Fail 2011 starring William Hurt & James Woods & Cynthia Nixon & Paul Giamatti & Edward Asner & Bill Crudup & Matthew Madine & Michael O'Keefe et al, director Curtis Hanson, Chinese to Paulson
Have you taken a large home loan? Or did you put your savings in stocks, mutual funds or bonds? If not, you can relax. But all of us who did are living on borrowed time. This is the story of the greatest financial crisis of our time: the one that is on its way. Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis, 2010; viz also Johan Norberg, Financial Fiasco
In 2003 it [interest rates] was cut all the way to 1%. ibid.
Greenspan argued that the Fed should never remove the punch bowl. But rather start refilling it when the party started to peter out. And if things went bad, the Fed would clean up the mess and tend to the hangover. ibid.
The big banks dared to make riskier loans because they had started repackaging loans and selling them to others as securities. ibid.
The rating agencies that rate securities gave the mortgage-backed bonds their highest rating ... The rating agencies were being paid by the sellers of securities. ibid.
The difference is that this bubble is much bigger. ibid.
Even banks who don’t want the money will be forced to take it, so that the public won’t know which banks are on the brink of collapse. ibid.
Congress approves the biggest financial bail-out in history: $700 billion. ibid.
President Bush gives billions of dollars to General Motors and Chrysler. ibid.
On February 7th 2009 Obama approves a stimulus package worth $787 billion; with the Bush stimulus package from year before US politicians have now spent close to $1 trillion to stimulate the US economy. ibid.
We have been saved from the consequences of one burst bubble by inflating a hundred new ones all around the world. ibid.
Bush almost racked up more US debt than all presidents before him combined. ibid.
Europe: eleven trillion Euros of debt ... Driving up the cost of borrowing for countries in trouble. Bankers II: Risking It All, BBC 2013
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.
Sixteen tons what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Say brother, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store. Merle Travis, Sixteen Tons, song 1947
People may live as much retired from the world as they like, but sooner or later they find themselves debtor or creditor to someone. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Credit is a system whereby a person who can’t pay gets another who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Charles Dickens
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
The credit card: this is you coded into that magnetic tape. James Burke, Connections s1e8: Eat, Drink & Be Merry, BBC 1978
What will happen when being in debt all the time is the normal way to live? ibid.
For those families struggling with the recession the end of cash actually spells disaster. Research shows that by sticking to cash you might save thousands of pounds each year. Dispatches: Beating the Recession – Cash vs Cards, Channel 4 2012
Big banks and the credit card firms are making big profits from this change. ibid.