By 2011 Japan’s government debt would reach 230% of GDP, the highest in the world. Princes of the Yen: Central Banks and the Transformation of the Economy, 2014
‘When we meet people who are really really broke and they’ve got other issues, we are really open to offer to pray with people.’ The Debt Saviours, John Kirkby founder Christians Against Poverty, BBC 2018
Never before has there been as much money as there is today. And rarely has money been so cheap. And yet the central banks continue to pump money into the world … Running up debts is practically free of charge. The Money Deluge: How the Rich Get Richer: Money in the World Economy, DW 2017
The result is a massive concentration of wealth right at the top. ibid.
Cheap money endangers the entire economy and promotes increasing levels of debt. ibid.
At some point it will inevitably fall apart. ibid.
Debt can be an asset. Debt tightens a company. Barbarians at the Gate: The Story of Ross Johnson, HBO 1993 starring Tom Aldredge & Graham Beckel & Joanna Cassidy & Matt Clark & Jeffrey DeMunn & Petre Dvorsky & James Garner & Mark Harelik & Joseph Kell & Jonathan Pryce et al, director Glenn Jordan
Huge debts put Tyson in a corner: Mike Tyson, who has grossed more than £150 million in his career says he is down to his last £3,000.
Tyson, who faces huge debts, needs to box again in order to stave off his creditors. Bankruptcy papers he has filed show he owes the US Inland Revenue Services £9.1 million and has other bills of £5.4 million. Daily Telegraph article 16th September 2004 Bob Mee
M1 money supply has increased yet another $210B in the week between Nov 23 and Nov 30 on top of the $500B the week prior, that’s over $700B in 2 weeks. M1 Money supply of the United States has increased by 64.5% since the beginning of 2020. There is no history for this. None. Sven Heinrich, NorthmanTrader twitter December 2020, cited Keiser Report
In the early sixties Ghana became a Mecca for European industrialists eager to win large contracts from Nkrumah’s government. They began to discover that the easiest way was to offer officials from Nkrumah’s party a bribe. This soon became the accepted way of doing business in Accra. What resulted was a rush to sell Ghana anything, no matter now inappropriate for an emerging African nation. Vast sums of Ghana’s precious foreign currency were spent on these projects. Then in 1964 Nkrumah’s industrial experiment received another body-blow: the world price of cocoa which had been falling for four years finally crashed. It was Ghana’s main source of foreign exchange. The millions of pounds needed to pay for the new factories began to dry up. Ghana, once one of the richest countries in Africa, began to slide into debt. Nkrumah turned to help to the European industrialists … Nkruma was an increasingly isolated figure on the world stage. What had once been seen as visionary ideas were now perceived as dangerous megalomania, and his country was sinking ever deeper into debt. Adam Curtis, Pandora’s Box V: Black Power, BBC 1992
Rawlings became a popular figure on a par with Nkrumah; his main aim was to lift the burden of debt. (Ghana & Debt) ibid.
In 1975 New York City was on the verge of collapse. For 30 years the politicians who ran the city had borrowed more and more money from the banks to pay for its growing services and welfare. By in the early ’70s the middle classes fled from the city, and taxes they paid disappeared with them. So the banks lent the city even more. But then they began to get worried about the size of the growing debt. Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation, BBC 2016
Out of eight members, nine of them were bankers … The financial institutions took power away from the politicians and started to run society themselves. The city had no other option. The bankers enforced what was called austerity on the city … To them there was no alternative to this system: it should run society. ibid.
No-one opposed the bankers. ibid.
The rise of a new powerful individualism that could not fit with the idea of collective political action … ‘the revolution was deferred indefinitely.’ ibid.
Trump started to buy up derelict buildings in New York, and he announced he was going to transform them into luxury hotels and apartments. But in return he negotiated the biggest tax break in New York’s history worth $160 million. The city had to agree because they were desperate. And the banks seeing a new opportunity also started to lend him money. And Donald Trump began to transform New York into a city for the rich, while he paid practically nothing. ibid.
[Andrew] Fastow had to figure out a way to keep the stock price up by hiding the fact that Enron was thirty billion dollars in debt. The Smartest Guys in the Room, 2005
The mother of all evil is speculation, leveraged debt. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps 2010 starring Michael Douglas & Shia LaBeouf & Josh Brolin & Carey Mulligan & Eli Wallach & Susan Sarandon & Frank Langella & Austin Pendleton & Sylvia Miles & Venessa Ferlito & Jason Clark et al, director Oliver Stone
It’s a bankrupt business model: it won’t work. It’s systemic, malignant and it’s global, like cancer. ibid.
The economy might be struggling but one area of business is thriving – the debt business – payday loans and door-to-door lending. Panorama: Undercover: Debt on the Doorstep, BBC 2012
We reveal the real costs of taking out a loan. ibid.
Provident dominate the doorstep-lending market. ibid.
Agents are encouraged to sell more loans. ibid.
Debt is on the rise. And there are so many ways to borrow. But up to 8.3 million people are unable to repay, and it doesn’t matter where the money came from if you can’t afford it, it can have the same devastating consequences. Panorama: Easy Money, Tough Debt? BBC 2019
‘The amount of interest that they can charge is now subject to a cap.’ ibid. Claer Barrett of pay-day lenders
It’s 2016 and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is travelling home after visiting her parents in Iran. But she’s stopped from returning to London. Nazanin was jailed for five years on spying charges widely denounced as baseless. We think she’s being held hostage. This is the inside story of why it has taken so long to get her and other innocent British prisoners home. Panorama: Hostage in Iran, Darragh Macintyre reporting, BBC 2020
Ana Diamond was also arrested while visiting her family in Iran. She was locked up in the same jail as Nazanin after being sentenced to ten years for spying. She’s a British-Iranian and she’s been a member of the young Conservatives. Ana spent 200 days in solitary confinement. ibid.
Britain had helped the Shah of Iran seize absolute power. But in 1979 the Shah was overthrown by the Islamic revolution. Relations between the two countries have been hostile ever since. ibid.
In recent years the imprisonment of eight British-Iranian dual nationals has been made public. But we think there’s more. ibid.
52 diplomats had been seized from the American embassy in Tehran. They were only freed after the American government agreed to release $8 billion of Iranian assets which the US had seized. ibid.
But there’s a sticking point when it comes to getting the British prisoners out. Once again it involves a debt from a 1970s arms deal. ibid.
There have been secret talks about paying the debt off. ibid.
1We investigate some of the biggest private companies running our care homes. Families ask how care home fees are being spent. Have some companies been taking too much money out of the system? Panorama: Crisis in Care: Follow the Money, BBC 2021
2017: The Four Seasons Group had about £29,000 of debt per care home bed they operated. ibid.
Buy now, pay later: the retail revolution changing the way we shop. Millions of us are using it to buy clothes, household goods and even food. Easy credit, but can we really afford it? The government is being urged to do more to protect customers. Panorama: Buy Now, Pay Later, BBC 2021
The UK is still in the grip of a cost of living crisis. And for many it’s getting worse. More and more people are falling into debt. Tonight, Panorama investigates the rise in debt management companies cashing in using high-pressure sales tactics to sign up vulnerable people. When some struggle to pay it can become a debt trap. Panorama: Debt Trap? Who’s Cashing In? BBC 2023
IVAs are a booming business. Last year a record high of just under 90,000 IVAs were registered in England and Wales. ibid.
You want to know what the mother of all bubbles was? It came out of no-where by chance. They called it the Cambrian Explosion. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps 2010 starring Michael Douglas & Shia LaBeouf & Josh Brolin & Carey Mulligan & Eli Wallach & Susan Sarandon & Frank Langella & Austin Pendleton & Sylvia Miles & Venessa Ferlito & Jason Clark et al, director Oliver Stone
He’s out with a new book and it is a shocker, believe me. It is called Is Greed Good? ibid.
Guys, we’re looking at an unprecedented meltdown now. ibid.
Three-quarters of the banking houses at this time are holding the same paper, and you are going to let Keller Zabel fail? ibid. Lou at the Federal Reserve
What about Moral Hazard? ibid. Bretton
You’re pretty much fucked. You don’t know it yet but you are the Ninja generation: no income, no job, no assets: you’ve got a lot to live for too. ibid. Gekko’s lecture
Greed is good: now it seems it’s legal. ibid.
They’re WMDs: they’re weapons of mass destruction. ibid.
And the beauty of the deal: no-one is responsible. Because everybody is drinking the same Kool-Aid. ibid.
The mother of all evil is speculation, leveraged debt. ibid.
It’s a bankrupt business model: it won’t work. It’s systemic, malignant and it’s global, like cancer. ibid.