Quotes about banking
page 5

“As time goes on, those who think that they live in democracies will live at best, in oligarchy or at worst under fascist regimes. In medieval times, people thought they were badly off when they paid tithes; a tenth of their income or produce to the feudal land lord. In this respect, they were better off than we are nowadays. Today more than one third of DM or dollar goes to service capital. Those who gain most are the super rich, multinationals, big insurance companies and banks.”

Margrit Kennedy (1939–2013) German architect

Source: Interest and Inflation Free Money (1995), Chapter Three, Who Would Profit From a New Monetary System?, p. 67

People, Democracy, Thinking, Time

“As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan The Rivals

Act III, sc. iii.
The Rivals (1775)

“Well, I'd say, and this is probably a change from what I would have said when I was younger: Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come. And I think the recent period has illustrated that. The governor of the Bank of England seems to have forgotten or not known that there was no bank insurance in England, so when Northern Rock got a run, he was surprised. Well, he shouldn't have been.
But history doesn't tell its own story. You've got to bring to it all the statistical testings that are possible. And we have a lot more information now than we used to.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Conor Clarke, An Interview With Paul Samuelson http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/an-interview-with-paul-samuelson-part-two/19627/, Part Two (2009) New millennium

History, Thinking, Study, Change

“So the fact that I had worked in more than a dozen countries and have been working for 25 years trying to implement health, education and social protection programmes, I think really helped me inside the World Bank Group and helped me to feel a sense of closeness to our frontline staff. But it’s a complicated organization… I’m still learning… and the ethnography will continue until I’m done with my work at the World Bank Group.”

Jim Yong Kim (1959) Korean-American physician and anthropologist, 12th President of the World Bank

UN News Centre, Interview with Jim Yong Kim, 7 October 13

Health, World, Education, Feeling

“Western social Darwinists, who include modernisation and development theorists and their kindred spirits (UN agencies, human rights organisations and activists, NGOs, the IMF, the World Bank, the US State Department, etc) would see the possible "advance" of the Arab world (as well as the rest of the "underdeveloped" world) toward a western-defined and sponsored modernity as part of a historical teleology wherein non-Europeans who are still at the stage of European childhood will eventually replicate European "progress" toward modern forms of organisation, sociality, economics, politics and sexual desires. What is emerging in the Arab (and the rest of the third) world is not some universal schema of the march of history but rather the imposition of these western modes by different forceful means and their adoption by third world elites, thus foreclosing and repressing myriad ways of movement and change and ensuring that only one way for transformation is made possible.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 49-50.
Desiring Arabs

World, Way, History, Universe

“Overconsumption by US citizens, US buy-outs of foreign companies and dollars the Pentagon spends abroad all end up in foreign central banks. These governments face a hard choice: either recycle the dollars back to America by buying US Treasury bonds or let the “free market” force up their currencies relative to the dollar – thereby pricing their exports out of world markets, creating domestic unemployment and business failures. US-style free markets hook them into a system that forces them to accept unlimited dollars. Now they want out. … The US is the world’s largest debtor, yet has avoided the pain of “structural adjustments” imposed on other debtor nations. US interest rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programmes that Washington has forced on other countries via the International Monetary Fund and other vehicles.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Washington cannot call all the shots http://michael-hudson.com/2009/06/washington-cannot-call-all-the-shots/ (June 14, 2009) Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

Pain, World, Failure, Business

“Money is the great weapon in a free, equal and competitive society, which skill and capital employ in the war of the wits, to exploitate and oppress the poor, the improvident, and the weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by the credit and banking systems.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 303

Money, War, Evil

“The true order of events shows that orthodoxy clearly has reversed the process through which investment is funded. Banks do not begin as intermediaries which accept deposits of 'savers' and then make loans to 'investors', for this would assume that the public has already developed the 'banking habit'. This habit is the end result of public experience with short term bank liabilities which have been created as banks extend short term credit to finance working capital expenses.”

L. Randall Wray (1953) American economist

Source: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies, 1990, p. 58; as cited in: Stein (1994).

“Every riot is followed by an Inquiry Committee, but its report is never published. Take U. P. for instance. A report in the Times of India of 13.12.1990 from Lucknow says: “At least a dozen judicial inquiry reports into the genesis of communal riots in the state have never seen the light of the day. They have been buried in the secretariat-files over the past two decades. The failure of the successive state governments to publish these reports and initiate action has given credence to the belief that they are not serious about checking communal violence… There were other instances when the state government instituted an inquiry and then scuttled the commissions. In the 1982 and 1986 clashes in Meerut and in the 1986 riots in Allahabad, the judicial inquiries were ordered only as an ‘eye-wash’…” Judicial inquiries are ordered as an eye-wash because the perpetrators of riots are known but cannot be booked. In a secular state it is neither proper to name them nor political to punish them. Inquiry committee reports are left to gather dust, while those who should be punished are pampered and patronised as vote-banks in India’s democratic setup. Therefore communal riots in India as a legacy of Muslim rule may continue to persist. If these could help in partitioning the country, they could still help in achieving many other goals.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 8

Books, Communication, Failure, Light

“On one level, then, Cadbury can be seen as a classic example of Victorian industrial paternalism, albeit carried to greater lengths than in most other companies of the day. On another level, however, the Cadbury system resulted in a very strong, highly flexible organisation which, thanks to the strong levels of employee commitment and participation, could draw on a large bank of experience and intelligence to solve problems and undertake what amounted to continuous improvement. The employee participation system in particular meant that Cadbury was constantly upgrading its processes and products. Herbert Casson regarded Cadbury in the 1920s as one of the best-run companies in Britain, if not the world, and summed up the key to its success very succinctly: ‘At Cadbury, everybody thinks.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 39; Quote on the Cadbury company at the time Edward Cadbury was managing director.

World, Intelligence, Problem, Thinking

“In banking or insurance trust is the only thing you have to sell.”

Patrick Dixon book Futurewise

Futurewise (1998)

“It seems that we are revisiting the whole argument about a European central bank. Many of us have the deepest misgivings about the establishment of such a bank, with no accountability to member states and an office life of eight years, in which it can do what it likes, provided that it supports the market economy throughout Europe, despite the social consequences. There is no time limit on the period of office of the political directors, and there is nothing about who they would be or where they would come from. But I ask the quite serious question: what on earth are these political directors to do, where do they come from, to whom are they answerable and how do we get rid of them if we do not like what they do?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1993/mar/30/treaty-on-european-union in the House of Commons (30 March 1993). 1990s

Life, Question, Support, Time

“[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history’s dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson’s estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt’s anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 8).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

War, School, Law, History

“In the very first year of his reign, he [Jahangir] tortured Guru Arjun Dev to death. His contempt for Hindus comes out clearly in his Tuzuk-i-Jahãngîrî: “A Hindu named Arjun lived in Govindwal on the bank of river Beas in the garb of a saint and in ostentation. From all sides cowboys and idiots became his fast followers. The business had flourished for three or four generations. For a long time it had been in my mind to put a stop to this dukãn-e-bãtil (mart of falsehood) or to bring him into the fold of Islam.” According to other accounts, he asked the Guru to include some sûrahs of the Quran in the Ãdi Grantha, which the Guru refused to do. In the eighth year of his reign, he destroyed the temple of Bhagwat at Ajmer. He persecuted the Jains in Gujarat, and ordered that Jain monks should not be seen in his kingdom on pain of death. Finally, he sent Murtaza Khan to Kangra for reducing that city of temples. The siege lasted for 20 months at the end of which he himself went to Kangra for slaughtering cows in that sacred place of Hindus, and building a mosque where none had existed before.”

Guru Arjan (1563–1606) The fifth Guru of Sikhism

Goel, S. R. (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India.

Death, Pain, Business, Time

“That crystal river keeps its pools of blue water free from all stain above its shallow bed, and slowly draws along its fair stream of greenish hue. One would scarce believe it was moving; so softly along its shady banks, while the birds sing sweet in rivalry, it leads along in a shining flood its waters that tempt to sleep.”
Caeruleas Ticinus aquas et stagna uadoso perspicuus seruat turbari nescia fundo ac nitidum uiridi lente trahit amne liquorem. uix credas labi: ripis tam mitis opacis argutos inter uolucrum certamine cantus somniferam ducit lucenti gurgite lympham.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book IV, lines 82–87
Punica

Bird, Sleep, Water, Singing

“Ann looked down at him, spread on the bank preparing to go to sleep, and lost her temper. "Then you should go and tell him! You should look after him! He's all alone in this wood, and he's quite small, and he doesn't even know he's not supposed to go out of it. He probably doesn't even know how to work the field to get food. You - you calmly make him up, out of blood and - and nothing, and you expect him to do your dirty work for you, and you don't even tell him the rules!”

Diana Wynne Jones book Hexwood

You can't do that to a person!"
Source: Hexwood (1993), pp. 54-55.

Food, Sleep, Personality

“Today's conventional cinema, or mass cinema, doesn't take the receiver seriously as a partner. It sees the audience member as a bank machine, whose only function is to spit out money.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

as interviewed by Richard Porton, "Collective Guilt and Individual Responsibility: An Interview with Michael Haneke," Cineaste, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 50-51

Money

“I've always known I'd be a bank robber. So judge all you want, ladies and gentlemen. Because you never did become an astronaut.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

A Softer World

“Basel has several first-rate restaurants, and it may be that in the view of the central-bank delegates this advantage outweighs the travel inconvenience, for central banking -or at least European central banking- has a firmly established association with good living.”

John Brooks (writer) (1920–1993) American writer

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Travel

“The members of this Elite are either direct incarnations of the fourth-dimensional Prison Warders or have their minds controlled by them. The aim of the Brotherhood and its interdimensional controllers has been to centralise power in the hands of the few. This process is now very advanced and it is happening on a global scale today thanks to modern technology. The game-plan is known as the Great Work of Ages or the New World Order, and it presently seeks to introduce a world government to which all nations would be colonies; a world central bank and currency; a world army; and a micro-chipped population connected to a global computer. What is happening today is the culmination of the manipulation which has been unfolding for thousands of years.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

ibid

Age, World, Game

“It really surprises me that some people in this party think we owe Westpac something. Or the ANZ Bank. Or the National.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Australian Labor Party national conference, July 1984.

People, Thinking

“"Breaking the bank at Monte Carlo" is a euphemism for closing a single gaming table. It was last accomplished at the Casino Ste. des Bains de Mer during the final days of 1957, with a harvest of 180 million francs.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter One, Kubeiagenesis, p. 10

Game

“Elin Nordegren could not be happier. How many girls here would trade places with her in a second? Where do I sign? First of all, she doesn't have to bang him (Tiger Woods) anymore! And she's probably gonna get, like $500 million! So they keep getting these pictures of her with the two kids, and she's just laughing all the way to the bank…haaa haaa haaa haaa…heugen fleugen heugen fleugen…hjorda fjorda hjorda fjorda…”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Whores on Crutches (2010)

Way, Girl

“The economic crisis was a reflection of narcissism and very primitive defense mechanisms (such as a complete denial of economic reality) built into the financial system. The best and brightest MBA students have been going into investment banking; many of them used their brains essentially to play casino games, and not to add much value to society.
Now, we’ve seen the result. Look at the least-admired professions in most countries over the years: telemarketers and used-car salesmen. Today, you have bankers and CEOs achieving the same low rating. Companies like Citibank — which was the brainchild of one of the most visibly narcissistic executives in the world, Sanford Weill — have essentially collapsed. They have grown too complex for the people who work there to understand. I strongly question what the different parts of Citibank have in common. No matter what kinds of regulatory reforms are initiated, more companies will collapse this way, because narcissism breeds this kind of unmanageable grandiosity.”

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries (1942) Dutch academic

Manfred Kets de Vries in: " The Thought Leader Interview: Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10209?gko=cbe31," in: Strategy + business. May 10, 2010. Originally published by Booz & Company.

People, World, Cars, Way

“In this life, who did you love,
beneath the drifting ashes,
beneath the sheeting banks of air
that barrenly bore our rations?”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Have One On Me (2010)

Love, Life

“It was on account of past depression, and in spite of present more encouraging conditions, that I have assembled an Agricultural Conference made up of those who are representative of this great industry in both its operating and economic sides. Everyone knows that the great need of the farmers is markets. The country is not suffering on the side of production. Almost the entire difficulty is on the side of distribution. This reaches back, of course, to unit costs and diversification, and many allied subjects. It is exceedingly intricate, for our domestic and foreign trade, transportation and banking, and in fact our entire economic system, are closely related to it. In time for action at this session, I hope to report to the Congress such legislative remedies as the conference may recommend. An appropriation should be made to defray their necessary expenses.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Hope, Suffering, Time, Past

“Did you see them in the river?
They were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that the empty quiver,
Brown skinned Indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Broken Arrow, from Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)
Song lyrics, With Buffalo Springfield

“Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 with the intention of destroying secular Palestinian nationalism.… OK, they did destroy the secular PLO and instead what they got was an Islamic fundamentalist movement that they couldn't control, that drove them out of most of Lebanon. What did they do next? They did exactly the same thing in the West Bank.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

“The tidings I received concerning Hungary were horrifying. The looting, rape and violence that had followed upon the entry of the Red Army into Budapest surpassed the horrors with which we had grown familiar in reports from Vienna and Berlin. Neither small girls nor old women were spared. Cases were known of women in Russian uniforms knocking down men who would not do their bidding. Commando troops with special equipment searched for gold and other precious metals. In the banks, safes were broken open, and the contents, whether they belonged to Hungarians, foreigners or even allies, were looted. The pillage went on for weeks, and banks, business firms and private houses were searched time and time again. The Jews were treated no better than the rest of the population, who were picked off the streets and set to work.”

Miklós Horthy (1868–1957) Hungarian Admiral and Regent 1920-1944

Source: Memoirs, p. 303

Women, Men, Search, Girl

“Put down all banks, admit none but a metallic circulation that will take its proper level with the like circulation in other countries, and then our manufacturers may work in fair competition with those of other countries, and the import duties which the government may lay for the purposes of revenue will so far place them above equal competition.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Charles Pinckney (1820) ME 15:280
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

Country

“The EU violates just about every green principle going. It is the opposite of local; it is destructive to the natural world; it wipes out cultural distinctiveness; it is anti-democratic; it puts the interests of banks and corporations before the interests of its working people. Why – when – how – did the Green Movement abandon its commitment to localism and democracy, and jump into bed with a beast like this?”

Paul Kingsnorth (1972) English writer and environmentalist

"Brexit Reconsidered: a Modern Day Peasants’ Revolt?", Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/21/brexit-reconsidered-a-modern-day-peasants-revolt/ December 21, 2016

People, World, Democracy, Nature

“Now in the mountains and fields of America, on its flatlands and in its jungles, in the wilderness or in the traffic of cities, on the banks of its great oceans or rivers, this world is beginning to tremble. Anxious hands are stretched forth, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Address to the United Nations (1964)

World, Mountain

“Since completing this memoir in 1995 I've returned to Palestine every year. In fact, apart from traveling abroad to lecture, Palestine is the only place I've been since I first journeyed there 15 years ago. I sometimes fantasize vacationing in Greece or Italy but never do. If I have time and cost isn't prohibitive, I always return to Palestine. I do so mostly from a sense of duty - do I have a right to be elsewhere? - relieved by the authentic affection I've developed for friends. I cannot say I enjoy going back. From the moment I arrive, even before arriving, I count the minutes left before I depart. The eminent Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Gaza as "the largest concentration camp ever to exist." The West Bank ranks only a mite less awful. Once the Israeli wall currently under construction is finished, the West Bank will replace Gaza with top honors. Bordered on both sides by four meter deep trenches, fortified with guard towers at regular intervals, and topped with barbed wire, this massive barricade will stretch across fully 347 kilometers - twice the size of the Berlin Wall.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

Postscript to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine
Other sourced statements

Travel, Sense, Universe, Time

“The problem for China is political. China is held together by money, not ideology. When there is an economic downturn and the money stops rolling in, not only will the banking system spasm, but the entire fabric of Chinese society will shudder. Loyalty in China is either bought or coerced. Without available money, only coercion remains. Business slowdowns can generally lead to instability because they lead to business failure and unemployment. In a country where poverty is endemic and unemployment widespread, the added pressure of an economic downturn will result in political instability.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 96

Money, Failure, Business, Problem

“I have had a son killed, a son-in-law die during the last battle of Nashville, another son has thrown himself away, a second son-in-law is in no better condition, I think I have had sorrow enough without having my bank account examined by a Committee of Congress.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Letter to his friend Colonel William G. Moore, complaining of Congressional investigations.... (1 May 1867).
Quote

Law, Thinking

“I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and newspapers. They have offered over fifty thousand dollars in rewards for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Men, Cars

“I do have the toughest, most comprehensive plan to go after Wall Street. And not just the big banks, all the other financial interests that pose a threat to our economy. And I have said no bank is too big to fail and no executive is too powerful to jail, and I will use the powers that have now been passed by the Congress, by President Obama, who, incidentally, took a lot of money from Wall Street, which didn’t stop him from signing into law the toughest regulations on the financial industry since the Great Depression. There are a lot of different powerful interests in Washington. I’ve taken them on. I took on the drug companies. I took on the insurance companies. Before there was something called Obamacare, there was something called Hillarycare, and I worked really hard to get comprehensive health care reform.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money, Law

“I am working with Unite in Salford to set up the Bank of Salford. It is going well. They have consolidated the credit unions, put money in, the city council will put their pay roll through it to stabilise the asset, the government are supporting it with advice and lowering entry requirements to become a bank that can lend to businesses as well as families. It will be bounded within Salford, there will be local residents on the board as well as institutions, but Unite cannot do it on their own. There needs to be a partnership between the Church and labour that can put some constraint on capital without relying on the state. Relational accountability and democratic governance are key to this. That is how the old bones will walk again, by renewing a commitment to the common good in action. It’s a great thing to do.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, Tackling Poverty Together http://www.bluelabour.org/2013/11/24/tackling-poverty-together/

Money, Family, Business, Support

“But I still couldn't quite believe in personal life after death. I preferred to think of our psychic experiences as emphasizing, instead, the unknown abilities of our present consciousness. "The Seth material could be coming from some deep inner source, an intuitive bank of inner knowledge available to everyone if they only look for it," I said.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 122

Life, Death, Knowledge, Thinking

“If the Bank really has development at heart, it will change the conditionalities away from privatization, deregulation and lower corporate taxation and put the emphasis on reducing military expenditures, ensuring that progressive tax legislation is enacted and enforced, that tax havens are outlawed, and that a financial transactions tax is adopted and the revenues used to build “A World Free of Poverty” through international solidarity.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the adverse impact of World Bank policies on human rights and the realisation of a democratic and equitable international order
2017, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

World, Change, Heart

“In the UK, while the arts are the second biggest sector after banking, they probably form less than one tenth of 1% of government spending. It's completely scuzzy.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Art

“I've got someone who loves me tonight.
I've got over a thousand dollars in the bank,
And I'm all right.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Room At The Top
Lyrics, Echo (1999)

Love

“The new arguments for rules take an entirely different tack. They are based neither on the ignorance nor the knavery of public officials and, in fact, assume that everyone knows how the economy operates—even the government! Moreover, the government's objectives are assumed to coincide with the people's objectives, and everyone has rational expectations. Despite these seemingly ideal circumstances, modern critics argue that a central bank left with discretion will err systematically in the direction of excessive inflation. To remedy this distortion, they advocate a fixed rule.”

Alan Blinder (1945) economist

Source: Central Banking in Theory and Practice. 1998, p. 47

People

“The sentence, 'stopping the printing presses,' is a figurative expression, because it is being done now by creating credit by the Federal Reserve System. But this is government action — all inflation is ultimately the result of activities which government determines and can control. And all inflations have been stopped in the past by the government stopping creating money, or preventing the central bank from creating more money. May I add just one thing? See, all inflations have been stopped by people who created or believed in a very naive form of the Quantity Theory, and acted on that. It may be wrong, but it is the only adequate theory effective to stop an inflation.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1975 interview https://mises.org/library/hayek-meets-press-1975 on "Meet the Press." 1960s–1970s

Money, People, Past

“In the ancient cultural places of the world there was a temple, a church or a cathedral in its center. From there came the order of life. In every modern big city there is a bank building in its center. In my »Pied Piper« I have tried to depict this as a kind of demon cult, where money is something to be prayed to like something sacred. It's even being expressed there in words that it is »God«. It performs miracles, because the multiplication of money itself is yet a miracle. After all, the dealings there are with a miraculous multiplication of money. It has the character of everlastingness. But if there is anything that is just a purely man-made thing, then it's money.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Ende no yuigon" ["Ende's Last Message"] (May 1999), broadcast of an interview of February 1994, as quoted in "Michael Ende's Last Words to the Japanese" http://www.equilibrismus.de/en/topics/general/rm-michael_ende.htm at Equilibrism (Equilibrismus.de)

Life, Money, God, World

“No one has a natural right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us who have a moneyed capital and who prefer employing it in loans rather than otherwise, set up banks and give cash or national bills for the notes they discount. Perhaps, to encourage them, a larger interest than is legal in the other cases might be allowed them, on the condition of their lending for short periods only.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:277
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Money, Nature

“How can I trust a bank to keep my money safe when it has dozens of pens stolen every day?”

Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994) American journalist

Money

“As we drive down the freeways, we see the new cars, but not the massive new-car loans that enslave their drivers to the banks.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 7 : The New Slave Master, p. 71

Cars

“They went running around to jewelry stores, banks, and well-stocked super-markets. There is not a single hill that they kept or liberated. On the other hand, the soldiers and officers in the army lead modest lives.”

Ratko Mladić (1943) Commander of the Bosnian Serb military

Commenting on war profiteers in interview with Robert Block, 1995
Interviews (1993 – 1995)

“I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason: Because God said so. As I said a minute ago, look it up in the Book of Genesis. It is right up there on the desk.In Genesis 13:14–17, the Bible says, "The Lord said to Abraham, 'Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward, and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever.... Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it to thee.'" That is God talking.The Bible says that Abraham removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar before the Lord. Hebron is in the West Bank. It is at this place where God appeared to Abram and said, "I am giving you this land — the West Bank."”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true. " Peace in the Middle East http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/peace.htm", Senate Floor speech regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict ()

God, Books, Support, Appearance

“To the existence of banks of discount for cash… there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. Even banks of deposit, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled to a return of the cash on demand, would be convenient for remittances, travelling persons, etc. But, liable as its cash would be to be pilfered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:431
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Travel, Thinking, Personality

“…the practice of thrift is not one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the people of this country. It exists more beyond the border, in Scotland, undoubtedly, than it does in England, but it is increasing, and increasing very much, happily, in England itself. I rejoice to say that it has been in the power of the State to effect this by judicious legislation—not by what is called "grandmotherly legislation", of which I for one have a great deal of suspicion—but by legislation thoroughly sound in principle—namely, that legislation which like your savings bank, helps the people by enabling the people to help themselves.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the annual meeting of the depositors in the provident savings banks connected with the South-Eastern and Metropolitan Railway Companies in the City Terminus Hotel (18 June 1890), quoted in The Times (19 June 1890), p. 6.
1890s

People, Help, Country

“Sometimes I think our central bank will keep printing money till we run out of trees.”

Jim Rogers (1942) American writer

The Downward Spiral http://www.jimrogers.com/content/stories/articles/THE_DOWNWARD_SPIRAL.htm

Money, Thinking, Tree

“Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Testimony Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives July 24, 1998 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/1998/19980724.htm. 1990s

“Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the [Nore] lightship marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral (the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and the great breadth of the Thames Estuary. But soon the course of the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore. The famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an effect of birds floating upon a pond… [The inward-bound ships] all converge upon the Nore, the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the distant shores running together towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of an enormous canal. The sea-reach of the Thames is straight, and, once Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem very uninhabited, except for the cluster of houses which is Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden jetty where petroleum ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the oil-storage tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts imitated in iron. Bordered by the black and shining mud-flats, the level marsh extends for miles. Away in the far background the land rises, closing the view with a continuous wooded slope, forming in the distance an interminable rampart overgrown with bushes.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

The Nore to Hope Point
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Men, War, Bird, Water

“The competition between chunks of capital is getting fiercer, there is the same old same old desperate need to keep wages down, desperate need to substitute machines for labour (but that costs trillions of investment) and no matter how hard you exploit workers, you still need to sell stuff to them, and if their wages are low, they can't buy the stuff. You can force the poorly paid into borrowing money (credit cards, wonga etc) but there comes a point when that causes a credit crisis: someone somewhere says they want some dosh and a bank somewhere says they haven't got the dosh (Northern Rock, last time). Let's remember, none of this is caused by migrants or left social democrats. This is a crisis entirely born from a system that is locked into competition for markets. So, these fervid rows between squadrons of extremely unpleasant individuals are rows between people who deep down know that they can't control this system of running the making and distribution of the things we need. They are just coming up with fantasies on how to stay in power while the next phase veers from crisis to crisis. It is terrible for millions of people in awful insecure, low paid jobs and/or in insecure, lousy housing, or if they are disabled, or for millions trying to migrate their way out of poverty and despair. We should be alarmed when members of the ruling class start pleading with us to take sides with them against the 'elite': one section of the elite calling for us to oppose the elite.”

Michael Rosen (1946) British children's writer

'Neither Brussels or the City - for the many not the few'. http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/neither-brussels-or-city-for-many-not.html (6 July 2018)

Money, People, Way, Time

“My hon. Friend is right in saying that the Bank of England has often operated against the interests of Labour Governments. That is due to the mandarins who run it. If the hon. Gentleman has such doubts about the running of a bank which theoretically is state-owned and state-controlled, what influence does he think will be possible in the case of an independent central bank dedicated to a course of Euro-monetarism?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1993/jan/14/treaty-on-european-union in the House of Commons (14 January 1993). 1990s

Thinking

“In central banking circles, it is viewed as obvious that the accumulation and destruction of reputational capital more closely resembles adaptive than rational expectations — it lags behind reality. Here, I think, the central bankers are closer to the truth than the economic theorists.”

Alan Blinder (1945) economist

Source: Central Banking in Theory and Practice. 1998, p. 52

Truth, Thinking, Reality

“It [The Weather Channel] is the most watched cable channel in America. I'll repeat that. It is the most watched cable channel in America. They were worried about the terrorists immobilizing us, and a portion of our countrymen watch weather. 'Kay, you don't get any more immobile than that… unless you're in a goddamn coma. That means you're saying, "I'd go to the window, but it's too far." If you want to know what the weather is you go to a window and stick your hand out and if you want to know what the temperature is you drive by a bank.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

The End of the Universe (2002)

Weather

“A single-motored miracle, a lead mine on each flank;
Below a shadow swept and awed the hundred-fathom bank.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928), The Wings of Lead

“I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg.”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

The Guardian, January 2, 1993.

Money, Confidence, History, Chance

“The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism. Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence political contributions. … Following his criticism of repressive Israeli policy on the West Bank, former president Jimmy Carter has suffered the loss of some of the financial backers of his center.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On Israel, America and AIPAC (2007)

Suffering, Loss, Success

“You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! And anyway, it’s like your bank balance, you know: you always have much less than you think. […] Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms… "Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky… We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha…" But it wont be like that[…] You don't want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to, would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Women, Men, Drink, Thinking

“They are kings and priests unto God. They wear crowns that flash in the everlasting light. They wear robes that are spotlessly white. They wave victorious palms. They sing anthems of such exceeding sweetness as no earthly choirs ever approach. They stand before the throne. They fly on ministries of love. They muse on the top of Mount Zion. They meditate on the banks of the river of life. They are rapturous with ecstasies of love. God wipes away all tears from their eyes.”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 306.

Love, Life, God, Tear

“Economics should be under no illusion that central banking will ever become a science.”

Jürg Niehans (1919–2007) Swiss economist

Source: The theory of money, 1978, p. 296

Science

“From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia
Rode a boy with a six-gun in his hand
And his daring life of crime made him a legend in his time
East and west of the Rio Grande.
Well, he started with a bank in Colorado
In the pocket of his vest a Colt he hid.
And his age and his size took the teller by surprise,
And the word spread of Billy the Kid.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

The Ballad of Billy the Kid.
Song lyrics, Piano Man (1973)

Life, Age, Boy, Time

“Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“You will find an allusion to some mysterious cause for a phenomenon in Stocks. It is surmised that the deferred debt is to be taken up at the next session, and some anticipated provision made for it. This may either be an invention of those who wish to sell, or it may be a reality imparted in confidence to the purchasers or smelt out by their sagacity. I have had a hint that something is intended and has dropt from 1 which has led to this speculation. I am unwilling to credit the fact, untill I have further evidence, which I am in a train of getting if it exists. It is said that packet boats & expresses are again sent from this place to the Southern States, to buy up the paper of all sorts which has risen in the market here. These & other abuses make it a problem whether the system of the old paper under a bad Government, or of the new under a good one, be chargeable with the greater substantial injustice. The true difference seems to be that by the former the few were the victims to the many; by the latter the many to the few. It seems agreed on all hands now that the bank is a certain & gratuitous augmentation of the capitals subscribed, in a proportion of not less than 40 or 50 [per cent] and if the deferred debt should be immediately provided for in favor of the purchasers of it in the deferred shape, & since the unanimous vote that no change [should] be made in the funding system, my imagination will not attempt to set bounds to the daring depravity of the times. The stock-jobbers will become the pretorian band of the Government, at once its tool & its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, & overawing it by clamours & combinations. Nothing new from abroad. I shall not be in [Philadelphia] till the close of the Week.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (8 August 1791)
1790s

Confidence, Imagination, Problem, Reality

“My name is Kate Schechter. Two 'c's, two 'h's, two 'e's, and also a 't', an 'r', and an 's'. Provided they're all there the bank won't be fussy about the order they come in. They never seem to know themselves.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 1

“The inspiring theory for Bretton Woods was suggested by a well known economist, beyond any suspect, John M. Keynes. Lord Keynes - as in the meanwhile he has been appointed by the English Crown - appeared worried about possible troubles in the international system of payments, like those occurred after World War One, which contributed to the new conflict. He has published an article on this subject in 1946. Consequently he gave the blessing of his authority to the agreements. Lord Keynes, as chief of the British delegation, was appointed chairman of the Commission II, charged for the institution of an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development - IBRD (World Bank). The Bretton Woods agreements represented a sort of solemn will for Lord Keynes, since he died out two years later the signature”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The international economy from a political to an authoritative drive, p. 129

War, World, Appearance

“You should be proud of your profession because there's less lying in journalism than in any other profession. They lie in education, they lie in politics, they lie in banking, they lie in labor; there's liars all over the place. Sports? Full of liars. And there are liars in journalism, but if there are liars, journalism will out them.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

In an interview with David L. Ulin to Los Angeles Times - Gay Talese talks with David L. Ulin http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/10/gay-talese-talks-with-david-l-ulin.html (October 15, 2010)

Lie, Education, Lying, Sport

“A traveller returns home after a long journey, and he sees the old city gate and hears the women and children on both banks of the river talking his own dialect. Ah, is this not happiness?”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"Thirty-three Happy Moments"

Women, Children, Travel, Home

“Economic and monetary union…is incompatible with independent sovereign states with control over their own fiscal and monetary policies. It would be impossible…to have irrevocably fixed exchange rates while individual countries retained independent monetary policies…such a system could never have the credibility necessary to persuade the market that there was no risk of realignment. Thus EMU inevitably implies a single European currency, with monetary decisions…taken not by national Governments and/or central banks, but by a European Central Bank. Nor would individual countries be able to retain responsibility for fiscal policy. With a single European monetary policy there would need to be central control over the size of budget deficits and, particularly, over their financing. New European institutions would be required, to determine overall Community fiscal policy and agree the distribution of deficits between individual Member States…It is clear that Economic and Monetary Union implies nothing less than European Government…and political union: the United States of Europe. That is simply not on the agenda now, nor will it be for the forseeable future.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House (25 January 1989), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 910.

Communication, Decision, Future, Country

“A sovereign government's budget is not like the budget of a household or firm. Governments issue the currency, whereas households and firms use the currency. As the chartalist, or modern money approach, explains, modern governments actually spend by crediting bank accounts. It really just amounts to a keystroke, pushing a key on a computer that generates an entry on someone’s balance sheet. Government can never run out of these keystrokes.”

L. Randall Wray (1953) American economist

L. Randall Wray (2015), Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist. p. 66

Money

“They wander in deep woods, in mournful light,
Amid long reeds and drowsy headed poppies
And lakes where no wave laps, and voiceless streams,
Upon whose banks in the dim light grow old
Flowers that were once bewailèd names of kings.”
Errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos, quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores.

Ausonius (310–395) poet

Errantes silva in magna et sub luce maligna
inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver
et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos,
quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marcent
fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores.
"Cupido Cruciator", line 5; translation from Helen Waddell Mediaeval Latin Lyrics ([1929] 1943) p. 31.

Flowers, Light

“At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off all together as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.”

Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942–2004) Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory

La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness

Way

“It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

"Bagpipe Music", line 9, from The Earth Compels (1938)

“The banks refused to deal with us, and they are still refusing, because of American gang-like actions.”

Ismail Haniyeh (1963) Palestinian politician

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/12CCCEA9-E92B-4C1D-88E4-3F08BE449536.htm

“The flute sings of an ancient riverbead one hundred fathoms deep, far below the Potaro River that runs to the Waterfall. Two rivers then. The visible Potaro runs to the Waterfall. The invisible stream of the river of the dead runs far below, far under our knees. The flute tells of the passage of the drowned river of the dead and the river of the living are one quantum stream possessed of four banks.”

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990)

Singing, Dead

“I find odd the view that a Government institution is better placed to evaluate "the technical and financial viability" of a project than a commercial bank. It may well be that our banks are deficient in the kind of expertize required for assessing projects but then what we should be doing is encouraging banks to acquire such expertize or to make use of outside, commercial, expertize. I do not believe in any case that a Government machine can provide a reliable judgement on such matters, an opinion the banking members of the committee appear to have shared, for they have prudently refused to commit themselves to accepting its advice. I myself tend to mistrust the judgement of anyone not involved in the actual process of risktaking.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

October 9, 1970, page 117.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Appearance

“The Upholder of the Cycles which supports the whole of Life, is water. In every drop of water dwells the Godhead, whom we all serve; there also dwells Life, the Soul of the "First" substance - Water - whose boundaries and banks are the capillaries that guide it and in which it circulates. More energy is encapsulated in every drop of good spring water than an average-sized PowerStation is presently able to produce.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Callum Coats: Water Wizard
Variant: "The Upholder of the Cycles which supports the whole of Life, is water. In every drop of water dwells the Godhead, whom we all serve; there also dwells Life, the Soul of the "First" substance - Water - whose boundaries and banks are the capillaries that guide it and in which it circulates. More energy is encapsulated in every drop of good spring water than an average-sized PowerStation is presently able to produce."

Life, Soul, Spring, Support

“Israel should withdraw immediately from the territories occupied in 1967. The bulk of Israeli settlers (150,000 of them) are concentrated in the big settlement blocks in the center of the West bank. These areas cannot be evacuated over night. But the rest of the land (about 90%–96% of the West bank and the whole of the Gaza strip) can be evacuated immediately. Many of the residents of the isolated Israeli settlements that are scattered in these areas are speaking openly in the Israeli media about their wish to leave. It is only necessary to offer them reasonable compensation for the property they will be leaving behind. The rest — the hard-core "land redemptions" fanatics — are a negligible minority that will have to accept the will of the majority.”

Tanya Reinhart (1943–2007) Israeli journalist

ZNet, Interview With Tanya Reinhart (November 8, 2002) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=50&ItemID=2595

Night

“I want to make sure you keep your eyes on the ball, that is, the two basic missions of a central bank. The first is maintaining macroeconomic stability: maintaining stable growth and keeping inflation low and stable. The principal policy tool for maintaining macroeconomic stability is monetary policy. In normal times, the Fed and other central banks use open market operations—purchases and sales of securities in markets—to move interest rates up or down, and in doing so try to create a more stable macroeconomic environment.
The second part of a central bank's mission is maintaining financial stability. Central banks are focused on trying to ensure that the financial system functions properly, and in particular, they want to prevent, if possible, and if not, to mitigate the effects of a financial crisis or a financial panic.”

Ben Bernanke (1953) American economist

Lecture 2: The Federal Reserve after World War II
The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis (2012)

Time, Parting

“The bottom line is that that is legitimately Israeli country. And they have a right to do within their country just like we have a right to do within our country. If they want to negotiate with Israelis, and all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they're not Palestinians. There is no "Palestinian."”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

This is Israeli land.
Rick Santorum claims everyone who lives in the West Bank is Israeli
2011-11-22
Grace
Kiser
Reuters
http://blogs.reuters.com/political-theater/2011/11/22/rick-santorum-claims-everyone-who-lives-in-the-west-bank-is-israeli/
2012-01-19

People, Country

“Currency competition and free banking might increase the efficiency of the financial system, and bring some small triangle welfare gains. But the key question is whether their adoption would improve macroeconomic performance. Even though Salin argues (p. 281) that ‘the best system is that which produces the least inflation’, fluctuations in output are also expensive.
Hayek states that the adoption of his proposal would end recessions. There is absolutely no reason to believe that. Nineteenth century history is evidence that free banking and currency issue, in the wrong legal and regulatory framework, can produce rather than reduce instability. The proponents of free banking and currency issue in this volume do not go much beyond a general belief in competition in justifying their views; they have certainly not explored the necessary legal and regulatory environment in any detail.”

Stanley Fischer (1943) American economist

Stanley Fischer, "Friedman versus Hayek on Private Money: Review Essay" (1986)

History, Question

“We begin with the people and they have to define the position. So relationships first, then build power among those people where they agree. So, based on support for thing like regional banks, interest rate cap, living wage, a very, very different kind of agenda. The words we don’t use much are equality, diversity, accessibility, inclusivity, because that’s not where people are. We work on living wage, anti-usury, regional banks, vocational colleges, workers on boards. And it’s a real change in the way that the party works.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

On the community organising agenda of Blue Labour, Interview with Australian Fabians: http://www.fabians.org.au/interview_with_maurice_glasman

People, Way, Support, Change

“The principle of rotation… in the body of [bank] directors… breaks in upon the esprit de corps so apt to prevail in permanent bodies; it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which on trial, proves to have been unfortunate.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1803. ME 10:437
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

Chance, Personality

“My real object is the establishment of jihãd against the Sikhs of the Punjab and not to stay in the countries of Afghanistan and Yagistan. The long-haired infidels who have seized sovereignty over Punjab are very experienced, clever and deceitful… The ill-natured Sikhs and the ill-fated polytheists have gained control over the Western parts of India from the banks of Indus to the capital city of Delhi.”

Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) Muslim activist

Syed Ahmad Barelvi. Letter written to his contemporary Muslim magnates, cited in Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahabi Movement in India, Calcutta, 1966, p. 358

Fate, Nature, Parting, Country

“The mismatch problem occurs as the workers required by companies for their vacancies are difficult to fill up due to shortage of talents in the labor pool. An Asian Development Bank study said labor mismatch is one of the culprits behind the country’s slow economic growth and that the mismatch may be caused by too many highly educated people chasing too few jobs in the country.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Philippine Star http://www.philstar.com/education-and-home/784501/govt-needs-redirect-skills-devt-program-address-unemployment-escudero-says 2012

People, Education, Problem, Study

“We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank,
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Oh Mercy (1989), Political World

Life, Death, World

“I am hard at work, at least I work as much as the weather permits. - I began a work the motif of which is the river bank in the direction of St. Paul's Church. Looking towards Rouen I have before me all the houses on the quays lighted by the morning sun, in the background the stone bridge, to the left the island with its houses, factories, boats, launches, to the right a mass of pinnaces of all colors… Yesterday, not having the sun, I began another work on the same motif in grey weather, only I looked more to the right [603]. I must leave you for my motif. I have a room on the street. I shall start on a view of the street in fog for it has been foggy every morning until eleven o'clock—noon. It should be interesting, the square in the fog, the tramways, the goings and comings..”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, Rouen 11 October 1883, to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 40
1880's

Color, Light, Sun, Housing

“It is possible to see Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas as complementary. Keynes is about short-run economic fluctuations brought about by erratic variations in the willingness of investors and governments to spend; Schumpeter is about the long-run trajectory driven by the erratic march of technological progress. This complementarity only became clear later, after both men had died, when economic growth became an explicit objective of public policy and topic of systematic analysis. Schumpeter was left frustrated by the younger generation’s affinity for his rival. In any case, the “preliminary volume” never materialized.
The world turns. Today, some sixty years after their deaths, Schumpeter’s star probably outshines Keynes’s. The business cycle has receded in importance, partly because the large industrial economies have sprouted a more stable structure, and partly because the lessons that Keynes taught have been learned by central banks and finance ministries. Instead, long-term economic growth has moved to the top of the political and intellectual agenda, and that was Schumpeter’s topic. As Robert Lucas memorably put it, once you have begun to think about economic growth, it is hard to think about anything else. It is a pity that troubled old Schumpeter did not live to see the triumph of his obsession.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

"Heavy Thinker" (2007)

Death, Men, World, Star

“Dangers are sum like a kold bath, very dangerous while you stand stripped on the bank, but often not only harmless, but invigorating, if you pitch into them.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“Lincoln's purpose in promoting Whig capitalism was not self-interest per se, but capitalism's necessary connection to equality, self-transformation, and social mobility, which were Lincoln's real goals. The essence of a free society, Lincoln said in 1859 (and here he was pirating J. S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy), was the openness it afforded to each of its citizens to make of themselves whatever they could, without the handicap of artificial inequalities based on status, nationality, or race. One could not do this in an economic environment governed by status, racial stratification, or centralized planning. Lincoln loved the Declaration's affirmation of all men's natural equality; but that equality would be meaningless without the unfettered opportunity to use it for something. If a national bank, tariffs, and "international improvements" promoted these opportunities, then they really were serving the interests of the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Letter (2010)

Love, Life, Men, Nature

“Banks are unprofitable because they make too many bad loans and their good loans have little profit in them. They also have the dubious advantage of an awful set of accounting conventions—“a rolling loan gathers no loss”—that permits them to mask their mistakes and hold assets without marking their value to market. Spreads are narrow, costs are high and there is too much reliance on insured deposits, with the accompanying incentive to take risks with someone else's money.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

“Speech on Banking Systems for the New York Times and Glass Steagall." http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/1990s/Banking%20System%20article%201990s.pdf. (1990)

Money, Loss

“I have never been a supporter of or an apologist for Saddam Hussein. Indeed, I recall many lonely occasions in the House when I spoke against Saddam Hussein, his genocide against the Kurdish people and the way that the British Government were financing the re-arming of Iraq. Indeed, the chemical weapons being manufactured in Iraq largely comprise chemicals made in western Europe and north America. Some £1 billion was loaned to Saddam Hussein by British banks, with the agreement of the British Government. His power is largely the creation of western Europe and north America. I do not support him and I do not think that he was right to invade Kuwait…The only purpose of sending troops to the region is to defend and guarantee oil supplies. I find it difficult to accept that the United States is merely defending a small country against a larger country. If that were true, why were Grenada and Panama invaded? What was the Vietnam war about, other than a powerful United States wishing to extend its control and influence throughout the world? …If the shooting starts and there is war in the Gulf, the retaking of Kuwait will not be a clean, clinical operation—it will be a filthy and long war with hundreds of thousands of dead, and at the end of that war there will still have to be negotiations on the future order and the future government of that area and those countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/nov/07/first-day in the House of Commons (7 November 1990). 1990s

War, People, World, Way

“Strategically, as leader of the Green Party and the first elected Green in Parliament, I didn’t want to be in a renovated bank building,” she says. “I wanted to be on Parliament Hill, in a building that screams out at you, this is Parliament!”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

The Walrus interview (2012)

“If I worked in a bank as a teller, there wouldn't be girls lined up outside of where I work when I'm done.”

Peter Steele (1962–2010) American musician

Source: Peter Steele biography "Soul on fire" by Jeff Wagner, p. 209

Girl

“Learning is like bank-notes: prudence and good behaviour are like silver, useful upon all occasions.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Learning

“I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world.
I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with Einar Thorsrud, who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the Tavistock Institute in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances.
Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo… The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters (2001) "Tom Peters's True Confessions" in Fast Company, December 2001 ( online http://www.fastcompany.com/44077/tom-peterss-true-confessions, Nov 31, 2001).

Life, People, World, Travel

Quotes about banking page 5

Quotes about banking
page 5