Money it turned out was exactly like sex – you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did. James Baldwin, 1924-1987, American novelist & essayist
Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. James Garfield
The underlying idea in the greenback philosophy ... is that the issue of currency is a function of the government, a sovereign right which ought not to be delegated to corporations. Davis Rich Dewey, MIT
Valhalla, Mr Beale. Please sit down. You have meddled with the primal forces of Nature, Mr Beale. And I won’t have it. Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow. Tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system out of systems. One vast and immune interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multinational dominion of Dollars. Petro Dollars. Electro Dollars. Multi dollars. Reichmarks. Rins, Rubles, Pounds and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of Nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr Beal? You get up on your little twenty-one-inch screen and howl about America and Democracy. There is no America. There is no Democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state – Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beal. The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr Beal. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that perfect world in which there in no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common purpose. In which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquillised. All boredom amused. Network 1976 Network starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Arthur Burghardt et al, director Sidney Lumet, Jensen to Beale
A man cannot set his hand to more liberal work than making money, for what we sell are our labour – the goods are merely transferred. Leon Battista Alberti, character dialogue
Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis. George Bernard Shaw, The Irrational Knot
Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. Franklin D Roosevelt
Do you know the only thing you’ve asked me for is money. The Firm 2009 starring Calum MacNab & & Paul Anderson & Daniel Mays & Doug Allen & Joe Jackson & Richie Campbell & James Kelly & Tommy Nash & Eddie Webber et al, director Nick Love, builder father to itinerant son
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from the defects of the Constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nation, of coin, credit and circulation. John Adams
The government claims the power to seize all financial instruments: currency, gold, silver, and everything else if they deem an emergency exists. Treasury Department letter 12th August 2005
Give him the money, Barney. Have a Go! BBC radio series
After a man has far more money than he possibly can spend for pleasures, what is left to excite him? For those with a ruling-class mentality the answer is power. Raw power over other human beings. The Capitalist Conspiracy
I noticed my dog was wet and I was wondering how she got wet cause it hadn’t rained, and then I noticed like paper all over my back yard. When I walked up there I noticed it was money. Then I took off running towards it. Matt Jameson
It was money all right. Lots of it. $6,500 in $20 bills. Origin: unknown ... The Jamesons got to keep the money. Unsolved Mysteries
Invisible coins
Will lead to
The triumph of many
Who spend them. Leonardo da Vinci
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.
The next step in the story of the Ascent of Money was the rise of the joint-stock limited-liability company. But the ability of the company to transform our lives would depend on another innovation – the stock market. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money e3: Blowing Bubbles
Stock markets really can be like soap bubbles – we never quite know when they’re going to burst. ibid.
Ponzi scheme – after the legendary Italian-American con-man Charles Ponzi: to pay out the generous returns it’s promised to the first lot of suckers, a Ponzi scheme needed to take in more money from the next lot of suckers. ibid.
The Mississippi bubble of 1719 was the first stock market bubble in history. ibid.
Enron: It pioneered many of the dubious business practices that continue to plague us today. ibid.
The most basic financial impulse of all is to save for a rainy day. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money e4: Risky Business
We’re stuck with random uncertainty. ibid.
It leaves you wondering why we bother spending so much on insurance policies every year. ibid.
A new idea began to emerge in Japan – that the state should take care of risk. ibid.
In theory derivatives offer a new way to hedge against an uncertain future. ibid.