Scare them. Tell them the truth ... In five days we’re all gone. ibid.
You are asking for the biggest bail-out in the history of this country. ibid. Bill to Federal Reserve
You are the worst kind of toxic debt the system is polluted with. ibid. Jacob to Bretton
Talk about an evil empire; it puts me to shame. ibid. Gekko to Jacob
Repeat the insanity till the next bubble blows. And that’ll be the one. The big one. ibid.
It’s not about money; it’s about the game, the game between people. ibid.
Sit down, Mr James. This is only a preliminary preceding but I want you to know you are under investigation on accusations of tax evasion and stock manipulation through among others an entity known as Locust Fund. ibid. investigator
Human being – we got to give them a break. We’re all mixed bags. ibid. Gekko to Winnie & Jacob
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 BBC 2011
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.
A titan of Wall Street prepares to address his staff in New York, London and around the world. He wants to put an end to rumours the firm is in trouble. Crisis? What crisis? Twelve weeks later the bank went bust. It was the biggest bankruptcy in history. The Fall of Lehman Brothers, BBC
The weekend that changed the world. ibid.
For months Wall Street had been worried about Lehman’s because of the bank’s massive property investments. ibid.
When the bank chiefs assembled that Friday evening it was clear from the start that there would be little sympathy from the government. ibid.
Few ever imagined that America’s fourth largest investment bank would fall so far and so fast. ibid.
Dick Fuld was to become the longest serving chief executive on Wall Street. ibid.
Dick Fuld also had an insatiable appetite for profits. ibid.
He had not been invited to the crisis meeting of chief executives. ibid.
Bank of America announced it had bought Merrill Lynch for fifty billion dollars. ibid.
The so-called sub-prime mortgage scandal was born. ibid.
The real money for Wall Street banks came not from selling mortgages to home owners but from selling bundles of these loans among themselves and other institutional investments. ibid.
It [Lehman’s] borrowed more and more money ... It’s called leverage. ibid.
Repossession rocketed and house prices slumped. ibid.
At their peak Lehman’s shares were worth $85 each; they were now worth 3 cents. ibid.
Lehman’s was the catalyst for the crash in 2008. ibid.
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; viz also Johan Norberg, Financial Fiasco, 2010
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 the 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 that all presidents before him combined. ibid.
The City is far more dishonest than anything I did before. The biggest organised crime in Britain was performed by the government stealing something the British people already owned and selling it back to them. Charlie Richardson, London Gangsta, worked in City on release from Prison 1984
It [The Great Depression] was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence. The international Bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all. Louis McFadden
The banks can and do create money, and they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. Richard McKenna
Very soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a national system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a charge-back for our fiat paper currency. Every American will be forced to register or suffer being unable to work and earn a living. They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges. They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two should figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor to this fraud which we will call ‘Social Insurance’. Without realizing it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur and in this manner, every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and, we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America. Edward Mandell House, founder of Council on Foreign Relations & promoter of League of Nations, to Woodrow Wilson 1913