Quotes about debt
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“Because Europe was reacting against Islam it belittled the influence of Saracens and exaggerated its dependence on its Greek and Roman heritage. So today an important task for us is to correct this false emphasis and to acknowledge fully our debt to the Arab and Islamic world.”

William Montgomery Watt (1909–2006) Scottish historian

The influence of Islam on medieval Europe, Edinburgh University Press, 1973, p. 84

World, Dependency, Falseness

“We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one. Now, look, I'm a great believer in all forms of energy, but we're putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are a disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt. You can't do what you're looking to do with $20 trillion in debt. The Obama administration, from the time they've come in, is over 230 years' worth of debt, and he's topped it. He's doubled it in a course of almost eight years, seven-and-a-half years, to be semi- exact.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money, People, Time, Country

“and they [the boomers] definitely pranked us fiscally with debt that [we] will never be able to pay off.”

Lauren Southern (1995) Canadian libertarian commentator

0:25-30
2017 New Year's Resolutions for Millennials

“I like my players to be married and in debt. That's the way you motivate them.”

Ernie Banks (1931–2015) American baseball player and coach

The New York Times (April 11, 1976).

Way, Motivation

“What debt [of slavery]? I never enslaved anyone in my life. Look, if you really look at history, the Portuguese didn’t even step foot in Africa. The blacks themselves turned over the slaves.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In an interview on TV Cultura https://www.poder360.com.br/eleicoes/bolsonaro-sobre-ditadura-ferida-que-precisa-ser-cicatrizada-esquece/ on 30 July 2018. Bolsonaro Says Black Brazilians Aren’t Owed Anything Over Slavery https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-31/brazil-candidate-bolsonaro-minimizes-slavery-praises-trump. Bloomberg (31 July 2018).

Life, History

“We must stop spending money that we just don’t have. Historic debt leads to historic tax increases, which stifle job growth.”

Kristi Noem (1971) South Dakota politician

Lawrence, Tom. S.D. Rep. Noem pushes for big cuts in federal spending http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/article/id/50875/group/homepage/, The Daily Republic, March 11, 2011.

Money

“It is a major defect of our present organized system and the economy of abundance that, without providing great goals, it has taken away some of the important real necessities, leaving people with nothing to do.
The void is soon filled. Behavior like going into debt on the installment plan, gives an artificial but then real necessity, something to do, paying up. This is the Rat Race, but I doubt that it would be run if people did not need its justifying necessity, for the commodities themselves are not that attractive.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 154.

People, Behavior

“And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned,
My face covered with a coat though now no one was left
Of those who could have remembered my debts never paid,
My shames not eternal, base deeds to be forgiven.
And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"And the City Stood in Its Brightness" (1963), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott
Bobo's Metamorphosis (1965)

“Does the Minister accept that the attitude of the EEC and of North American countries towards commodity prices has been a major contributory factor in the debt crisis in much of the world? Does she agree that the latest round of Lomé convention prices on exports from ACP countries has resulted in virtually the lowest real terms prices ever achieved by those countries? They are worried about the way in which they have been treated by the EEC. Is the right hon. Lady aware that exports from ACP countries to the European Community are at their lowest level for 25 years? Those countries and many of us are worried about the growing crisis faced by the poorer countries because the richer industrial countries are closing their markets to them and forcing them into debt and low commodity prices.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jan/08/commodity-prices in the House of Commons (8 January 1990). 1990s

World, Way, Communication, Country

“I am with the uprising of women in the Arab world because I can think and fully practice my religion (like men). Also, I’m in debt to my daughter to offer her an honorable life.”

Loujain al-Hathloul (1989) Saudi Arabian activist

As quoted in Did Facebook censor an Arab Women’s Rights Group?l http://www.vocativ.com/tech/facebook/facebook-double-standard-why-these-women-had-their-pictures-taken-down/index.html (November 13, 2012), Vocativ.

Life, Women, Men, World

“When America's creditors consider our behavior they see total fiscal irresponsibility. They see a deluded country that acts as if it is a privilege for foreigners to lend to it, and a deluded country that believes that foreigners will continue to accumulate US debt until the end of time.The fact of the matter is that the US is bankrupt.”

Paul Craig Roberts (1939) American economist

"A Bankrupt Superpower" http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03182008.html, CounterPunch (2008-03-18)

Behavior, Country

“If there was anyone who actually fit the category of conservative, if there was such a category of people, they would have a very easy way to deal with the fact that 60% of the children under 2 [in Nicaragua] are suffering probable brain damage. Namely, by paying their debts. Simple conservative principle. But that's beyond unthinkable. Compassionate conservatives might want to go beyond that, if they existed. But they're much more interested in making political capital over the fact that a woman in a vegetative state shouldn't be allowed to die in dignity.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, March 22, 2005 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEvIDiVheys. Quotes 2000s, 2005

Children, People, Way, Suffering

“By historical standards and given the gloomy corporate profits outlook in an environment of high corporate debt and rising interest rates, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is considerably overvalued at late-2006 levels and should be avoided. I say that, even setting aside the imminent prospect of a collapsed dollar and the recession and hyperinflation that would accompany it.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

“But further analysis and experience soon raised doubts about the efficacy of these new tools. Empirical research indicated that the Keynesian multiplier was much smaller than earlier analyses had assumed, reduced by a crowding out of interest-sensitive spending caused by an induced increase in the demand for money and by the effect of the larger national debt on long-term interest rates. The leakage of demand through imports and the effect of the fiscal expansion on the exchange rate further reduced the multiplier.”

Martin Feldstein (1939–2019) American economist

"Rethinking the Role of Fiscal Policy" (2009).

Money

“There is, of course, a gold mine or a buried treasure on every mortgaged homestead. Whether the farmer ever digs for it or not, it is there, haunting his daydreams when the burden of debt is most unbearable.”

Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981) American historian and biographer

No Man Knows My History, ch. 2 (1945)

“A legitimate enterprise had to have some moral basis, and the only morality the company knew was debt.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 350

“The slaves of our times are not all those factory and workshop hands only who must sell themselves completely into the power of the factory and foundry-owners in order to exist, but nearly all the agricultural laborers are slaves, working, as they do, unceasingly to grow another's corn on another's field, and gathering it into another's barn; or tilling their own fields only in order to pay to bankers the interest on debts they cannot get rid of. And slaves also are all the innumerable footmen, cooks, porters, housemaids, coachmen, bathmen, waiters, etc., who all their life long perform duties most unnatural to a human being, and which they themselves dislike.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Slavery of Our Times

Source: The Slavery of Our Times (1890), Chapter 8: Slavery Exists Among Us

Life, Time, Cooking

“Barack Obama has failed America. When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer. Three years later, over 16 million Americans are out of work or have just quit looking. Millions more are underemployed. Three years later, unemployment is still above 8%, a figure he said his stimulus would keep from happening. Three years later, foreclosures are still at record levels. Three years later the prices of homes continue to fall. Three years later, our national debt has grown nearly as large as our entire economy. Families are buried under higher prices for food and higher prices for gasoline. It breaks my heart to see what's happening in this country. These failing hopes make up President Obama's own misery index. It's never been higher.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Mitt Romney 2012 Presidential Campaign Announcement Speech http://blog.4president.org/2012/2011/06/mitt-romney-2012-presidential-campaign-announcement-speech-june-2-2011-stratham-new-hampshire-remark.html 2011

Family, Food, Hope, Home

“Every little school boy is trained to recite the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation. It is taken as axiomatic that under them the new nation was falling into anarchy and was only saved by the wisdom and energy of the Convention. … The nation had to be strong to repel invasion, strong to pay to the last loved copper penny the debts of the propertied and the provident ones, strong to keep the unpropertied and improvident from ever using the government to secure their own prosperity at the expense of moneyed capital. … No one suggests that the anxiety of the leaders of the heretofore unquestioned ruling classes desired the revision of the Articles and labored so weightily over a new instrument not because the nation was failing under the Articles, but because it was succeeding only too well. Without intervention from the leaders, reconstruction threatened in time to turn the new nation into an agrarian and proletarian democracy. … All we know is that at a time when the current of political progress was in the direction of agrarian and proletarian democracy, a force hostile to it gripped the nation and imposed upon it a powerful form against which it was never to succeed in doing more than blindly struggle. The liberating virus of the Revolution was definitely expunged, and henceforth if it worked at all it had to work against the State, in opposition to the armed and respectable power of the nation.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

¶13. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 33–34. "The State" (1918), II

Love, Wisdom, Money, Hostility

“Ultimately nations, like individuals, can not depend upon each other but must depend upon themselves. Each one must work out its own salvation. We have every desire to help. But with all our resources we are powerless to save unless our efforts meet with a constructive response. The situation in our own country and all over the world is one Chat can be improved only by bard work and self-denial. It is necessary to reduce expenditures, increase savings and liquidate debts. It is in this direction that there lies the greatest hope of domestic tranquility and international peace. Our own country ought to finish the leading example in this effort. Our past adherence to this policy, our constant refusal to maintain a military establishment that could be thought to menace the security of others, our honorable dealings with other nations whether great or small, has left us in the almost constant enjoyment of peace.”

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)

World, Peace, Hope, Effort

“Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. I, ch. 22.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“The role of expectations is not limited to monetary policy but is crucial in many areas of economics, as Bob showed in his later research on investment, unemployment, taxation, public debt management, and asset pricing. In all of these situations, the appropriate evaluation of policy takes account of the way that expectations would be rationally formed.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 29

Way

“For those who are the inheritors of a noble estate and a high place in the world, it is a good thing to pause at intervals and consider by what favor of fortune and of ancestry their lines have fallen in such pleasant places. Thus to meditate upon that course of events, which has given them what they have and made them what they are, will tend to remind them how great is their debt and how little is their share of merit.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

World

“I spoke of the melancholy financial position of Great Britain. Half our foreign investments had been spent in the common cause when we stood alone. There is a great external debt of three thousand million pounds. We should require time to get on our feet again. The President listened closely, attentively and sympathetically. He spoke of the immense debt the Allies owed to Britain for that period when she fought alone. "If you had gone like France," he added, "we might well be fighting the Germans on the American coast at the present time."”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Churchill's account of his conversation with President Truman (18 July 1945), quoted in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 298
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Time, Fight

“The doves are pleased that [Robert McNamara] finally concedes that "our blundering efforts to do good" turned into a "dangerous mistake," as Anthony Lewis put the matter long after corporate America had determined that the game was not worth the candle. As the doves had by then come to recognize, although we had pursued aims that were "noble" and "motivated by the loftiest intentions," they were nevertheless "illusory" and it ended up as a "failed crusade" (Stanley Karnow). McNamara has now "paid his debt," Theodore Draper writes in the New York Review, finally recognizing that "The Vietnam War peculiarly demanded a hardheaded assessment of what it was worth in the national interest of the United States," just as the invasion of Afghanistan "peculiarly demanded" such an assessment in the Kremlin. Draper is outraged by the "vitriolic and protracted campaign" against McNamara by the New York Times. "The case against McNamara largely hinges on the premise that he did not express his doubts" about "whether American troops should continue to die" early on, but the Times did not either (though Draper did, he proudly reminds us). Could there be another question?”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Z Magazine, July 1995

War, Game, Motivation, Question

“We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Address to the people of Canada on the coronation of George VI (12 May 1937)

Past, Future

“Look, if you like the freedom to play violent video games, watch internet porn, and grow weed in your house without police using thermal energy to bust you, you owe a debt to Antonin Scalia. You also probably work on my staff. Whether you loved or hated his narrow literalism about a document written before machine guns and gay people were invented, Scalia was by all accounts a nice guy with a wicked sense of humor. People liked him. … Good people do have bad ideas.”

Samantha Bee (1969) Canadian comedic actress and author

Full Frontal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bvl6spBVEc, February 15, 2016

Love, Hate, People, Guy

“To tell the history of debt, then, is also necessarily to reconstruct how the language of the marketplace has come to pervade every aspect of human life—even to provide the terminology for the moral and religious voices ostensibly raised against it.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Five, "A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Moral Relations", p. 89

Life, History

“The word “loser” is spoken with such contempt these days, a man might like to forget the losses in his own life that taught him something about good judgment. The money he invested in that casino in Atlantic City that went bust, the university course he enrolled in that promised to teach him the secrets of success but instead he wound up unemployed and 40 grand in debt, the candidate whose hat he wore who turned out to be tone-deaf and deluded — dumb, dumb, dumb, and yet his loved ones did not chortle and point and do the nyaa-nyaa. They put an arm around him and said, “This is how we learn.””

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

And it is. "Garrison Keillor: God help us. We’re in trouble down here." in The Washington Post (26 July 2016) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/god-help-us-were-in-trouble-down-here/2016/07/26/989cde08-535d-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html

Love, Life, Money, Secret

“Reactions to our adversity are not entirely uniform. At the dovish extreme, we find Senator John Kerry, who warns that we should never again fight a war "without committing enough resources to win"; no other flaw is mentioned. And there is President Carter, the noted moral teacher and human rights apostle, who assured us that we owe Vietnam no debt and have no responsibility to render it any assistance because "the destruction was mutual," an observation so uncontroversial as to pass with no reaction. […] Properly statesmanlike, President Bush announces that "It was a bitter conflict, but Hanoi knows today that we seek only answers without the threat of retribution for the past." Their crimes against us can never be forgotten, but "we can begin writing the last chapter of the Vietnam war" if they dedicate themselves with sufficient zeal to the MIAs. We might even "begin helping the Vietnamese find and identify their own combatants missing in action," [New York Times Asia correspondent] Crossette reports. The adjacent front-page story reports Japan's failure, once again, to "unambiguously" accept the blame "for its wartime aggression."”

Noam Chomsky book Year 501

Year 501, 1993 http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/year/year-c10-s07.html. Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

War, Failure, Teachers, Time

“[A]nd between this top-quality programming are the most miserable adverts in the world – former Mancunian top cop John Stalker trying to sell you sun awnings; trying to get you to blot out every ray of light from the world for those in the grip of manic depression – 'Hello, I'm John Stalker. Are you, like me, tired of the pitiless glare of an English summer; maddened by the relentless gaze of cruel Helios; sick of lurking in your house all summer long, like a mad bloke in a siege situation - such as I would have dealt with in my high-flying career? Well, suffer no longer. Install Gloom Master sun awnings - summer bang to rights!' Terrible! Then it all gets worse with those terrible loan adverts. These awful, tragic, hollow-eyed wraiths come on, telling you these awful stories - 'I'm up to my eyes in debt, and, curiously, no reputable company would give me another loan! Then I discovered Dodgy Bastards. They've given me a million pounds, and all they want in return are my kidneys.' No, don't do it! And then - worse than that - the accident insurance adverts - 'Where there's blame, there's a claim”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

when people who've had these accidents come on like medieval beggars, and wave their stumps at you for money with these outlandish stories - 'I slipped on a banana skin and successfully sued the Dominican Republic...' (Wrap up Warm tour, May 2004)
Stand-up

Money, People, World, Light

“So the Bush-Obama administration has taken a fiscal stance diametrically opposed to that of the patron saint of free enterprise. While escalating war in Afghanistan and maintaining over 850 military bases around the world, the administration has run up the national debt that Smith decried. By shifting the tax burden off property and off rent-seeking monopolies – above all, off the financial sector – this policy has raised America’s cost of living and doing business, thereby undercutting its competitive power and running up larger and larger foreign debt.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Adam Smith critiques the Deficit Reduction Commission http://michael-hudson.com/2010/12/adam-smith-critiques-the-deficit-reduction-commission/ (December 6, 2010) Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

War, World, Business

“The fact that previous generations have handed down to us a substantial public heritage by way of roads, port, etc. almost completely free of debt, seems to me to impose some limitation on the validity of the theory that by borrowing we should, or could, pass on the burden of development to the next generation.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 28, 1962, page 55.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Way

“England's improvement by sea and land. To outdo the Dutch without fighting. To pay debts without moneys. To set at work all the poor of England with the growth of our own lands. To prevent unnecessary suits of law; with the benefit of a voluntary register. Directions where vast quantities of timber are to be had for the building of ships, with the advantage of making the great rivers of England navigable. Rules to prevent fires in London, and other great cities; with directions how the several companies of handicraftsmen in London may always have cheap bread and drink. By Andrew Yarranton, Gent. London, printed for the author, &c., 1677.”

Andrew Yarranton (1619–1684) English civil engineer

Full title cited in Patrick Edward Dove (1854, p. 403)
Quotes from England's Improvement, (1677)

Money, Law, Drink, Fight

“Realistically, it will be a case of muddling through, struggling from one crisis to the next. It is difficult to forecast how long this will continue for, but it cannot go on endlessly. Governments will pile up more debt — and then one day, the house of cards will collapse.”

Otmar Issing (1936) German economist

Issing commenting the situation in Eurozone in 2016 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/architect-of-the-euro-now-says-it-is-a-house-of-cards-2016-10-19

Housing

“Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness.”

William Buckland (1784–1856) English clergyman, geologist and palaeontologist

Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1841), p. 109

Life, Death, Happiness, Universe

“Many of the great achievements in history that are commonly attributed to one geo-cultural domain often owe a great debt to those of others. In this sense, some of the greatest achievements of human civilisation have been collective efforts and are part of the same human story.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.14

History, Sense, Effort, Parting

“I repudiate these attacks on him…a German of the Germans…his honour so assailed. Who made this infamous attack upon our friend? Men who till now have been looked upon as Germans, but who henceforth are unworthy of that name. And these men come from the Reich's working classes, who owe so infinite a debt of gratitude to Krupp!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech at the funeral of Friedrich Alfred Krupp (27 November 1902), quoted in William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968 (London: Michael Joseph, 1968), p. 275
1900s

Men, Gratitude

“I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.
I will not be a reed to hold the sound
Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,
Turning my torment into music for them.
They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,
I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,
Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel —
Beauty in all things and in every hour.
The gods have given life — I gave them song;
The debt is paid and now I turn to go.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Sappho (Rivers to the Sea)"
Rivers to the Sea (1915)

Life, God, Beauty, Music

“The resolution of our current account deficit and household debt burdens does not strike me as overly worrisome, but that is certainly not the case for our fiscal deficit, which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will rise significantly as the baby boomers start to retire in 2008. Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability because the budget deficit is not readily subject to correction by market forces that stabilize other imbalances.”

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

March 10, 2005 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2005/20050310/default.htm. 2000s

Baby

“The do-good liberal who said we have to take care of everybody -- and they are well intentioned -- the more debt they run up to give to the poor, the poorer the people get because they cannot keep up.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Glenn Beck Program, January 23, 2008 http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/4897/ 2000s, 2006-2009

People

“Foreign debts. About $12,000,000,000 is due to our Government from abroad, mostly from European governments. Great Britain, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland have negotiated settlements amounting close to $5,000,000,000. This represents the funding of over 42 per cent of the debt since the creation of the special Foreign Debt Commission. As the life of this commission is about to expire, its term should be extended. I am opposed to the cancellation of these debts and believe it for the best welfare of the world that they should be liquidated and paid as fast as possible. I do not favor oppressive measures, but unless money that is borrowed is repaid credit can not be secured in time of necessity, and there exists besides a moral obligation which our country can not ignore and no other country can evade. Terms and conditions may have to conform to differences in the financial abilities of the countries concerned, but the principle that each country should meet its obligation admits of no differences and is of universal application.”

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)

Life, Money, World, Universe

“When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter III, Part V, p. 1012.

“Everything we hope to do, depends on an expanding economic pie. And only a vibrant, competitive, thriving private sector can create that. Government is a necessary partner, but it is the junior partner. Only the private sector can produce the revenues for the social programs that we Democrats care so much about. The financing of those programs through ever more public debt violates our generation responsibility.”

Paul Tsongas (1941–1997) American politician

ibid.

Hope, Dependency

“First our pleasures die — and then
Our hopes, and then our fears — and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust — and we die too.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Death (Shelley, 2)

Death (1820), st. 3

Pleasure, Fear, Hope, Dead

“What! from his helpless Creature be repaid
Pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allay'd —
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer — Oh, the sorry trade!”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.”

Nouriel Roubini (1958) American economist

"RGE Conference Call on the Economic and Financial Outlook... and why the Treasury TARP bailout is flawed," http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253762/rge_conference_call_on_the_economic_and_financial_outlookand_why_the_treasury_tarp_bailout_is_flawed RGE Monitor (2008-09-26).

Money

“Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have let me give you five reasons why I'm opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution.One: I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war, or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. War must be the last recourse in international relations, not the first.Second, I am deeply concerned about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations. If President Bush believes that the US can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal obligation can our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing.Third, the United States in now involved in a very difficult war against international terrorism, as we learned tragically on September eleventh. We are opposed by Osama Bin Ladin and religious fanatics who are prepared to engage in a kind of warfare that we have never experienced before. I agree with Brent Scowcroft, Republican former national security adviser for President George Bush senior, who stated and I quote, "An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize if not destroy the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken."Fourth, at a time when this country has a six-trillion dollar national debt and a growing deficit, we should be clear that a war and a long-term American occupation of Iraq could be extremely expensive.Fifth, I am concerned about the problems with so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed? And what role will the US play in an ensuing civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the regions who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated? And these are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speech on Iraq War Resolution in US House of Representatives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM (9 October 2002) 2000s

Women, Men, War, Children

“My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Presidential Radio Address (24 February 2001) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/02/24/national/main274334.shtml 2000s, 2001

“Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Letter (10 February 1804).

Death, Country

“A great measure of world poverty today and African poverty in particular is due to the continuing dependence on foreign markets for manufactured goods, which undermines domestic production and dams up domestic skills, apart from piling up unmanageable foreign debts. Gandhi's insistence on self-sufficiency is a basic economic principle that, if followed today, could contribute significantly to alleviating Third World poverty and stimulating development.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)

World, Dependency

“The slender debt to Nature's quickly paid,
Discharged, perchance, with greater ease than made.”

Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English poet

Book II, no. 13. Compare: "To die is a debt we must all of us discharge", Euripides, Alcestis, line 418.
Emblems (1635)

Nature

“I want to see Brother Zachariah."
"He is well. You need not worry yourself about him."
"I want to see him. I nearly killed him at the Citadel--"
"That was not you. That was the heavenly fire. And it did anything but harm him."
"He said when I met him that he believes a debt is owed to the Herondales. I'm a Herondale. He'd want to see me."
"And then you intend to depart the Basilias?"
"There is nothing wrong with me. I don't need to be in the infirmary. Surely you could be using your resources more fruitfully on the actually wounded. Look, you can either bring me to Brother Zachariah or I can wander around yelling for him until he turns up."
"You are a great deal of trouble, Jace Herondale.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

"So I've been told."
Jace Herondale and Brother Enoch, pg. 229-230
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

“There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil. This is a tribute to those who toil day and night to keep us safe – law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts, homeland security and diplomatic personnel, and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. Our nation is blessed to have citizens who volunteer to defend us in this time of danger. I have cherished meeting these selfless patriots and their families. America owes you a debt of gratitude. And to all our men and women in uniform listening tonight: There has been no higher honor than serving as your Commander in Chief.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)

Women, Men, Family, Law

“The part of the U. S. Navy alone in this war was stupendous. And I wish here to acknowledge our debt not only to the men and women of the United States Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and their several Women's Reserves, but also to those innumerable civilians who aided the Navy's war effort.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

From King's Foreword in Battle Stations! Your Navy In Action (1946) by Admirals of the U.S. Navy, p. 10

Women, Men, War, Effort

“As in the beginning, so now, and it will be for ever after, we come of a race who are very bad managers in youth, though we improve as we get older. I have cut down the cost of my falconers to 1200 florins, and I hope soon to be out of debt.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

William writing to his brother Louis, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 10

Youth, Hope

“We should consider for a moment how much the Christian understanding of life is based on the reality of "Grace"; let us also recall that the Holy Spirit Himself is called "Gift"; that the greatest Christian teachers have said that the Justice of God is based on Love; that something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved - is presumed in everything achieved or laid claim to; that what is first is always something received — if we keep all this before our eyes, we can see the abyss that separates this other attitude from the inheritence of Christian Europe.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 20

Love, Life, God, Justice

“Taking out a commission of bankruptcy is a well-known mode of recovering a debt.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

Guthrie v. Fisk (1824), 3 B & C. 183.

“The course of reform is in progress thanks to Decree No. 6 of the Revolutionary Council-one of the monumental achievements in the eyes of the regime. Under this decree, farmers with little or no land have been freed of the debts they had incurred to landlords and moneylenders. You have sharpened the class struggle in Afghanistan. The class struggle which we awaited for many long years is now gaining in intensity. Previously, nothing material existed for our people to awaken their political awareness and to make them rise against the feudal lords.”

Nur Muhammad Taraki (1917–1979) Prime Minister of Afghanistan

Speech August 1, 1978 http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1978/eirv05n35-19780912/eirv05n35-19780912_061-who_are_afghanistans_new_leaders.pdf.

People

“International indebtedness involves not only the usual slavery of debt, but the interest of the creditor nations in the debtor country.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Article for Zeit (20 April 1924), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 348
1920s

Country

“So the game plan is not merely to free the income of the wealthiest class to “offshore” itself into assets denominated in harder currencies abroad. It is to scrap the progressive tax system altogether. … How stable can a global situation be where the richest nation does not tax its population, but creates new public debt to hand out to its bankers? … The “solution” to the coming financial crisis in the United States may await the dollar’s plunge as an opportunity for a financial Tonkin Gulf resolution. Such a crisis would help catalyze the tax system’s radical change to a European-style “Steve Forbes” flat tax and VAT sales-excise tax…. More government giveaways will be made to the financial sector in a vain effort to keep bad debts afloat and banks “solvent.” As in Ireland and Latvia, public debt will replace private debt, leaving little remaining for Social Security or indeed for much social spending. … The bottom line is that after the prolonged tax giveaway exacerbates the federal budget deficit – along with the balance-of-payments deficit – we can expect the next Republican or Democratic administration to step in and “save” the country from economic emergency by scaling back Social Security while turning its funding over, Pinochet-style, to Wall Street money managers to loot as they did in Chile. And one can forget rebuilding America’s infrastructure. It is being sold off by debt-strapped cities and states to cover their budget shortfalls resulting from un-taxing real estate and from foreclosures. Welcome to debt peonage. This is worse than what was meant by a double-dip recession. It will be with us much longer.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Obama's Bushism http://michael-hudson.com/2010/12/obamas-bushism/ (December 8, 2010) Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

Money, Game, Effort, Change

“The past! ah, we owe it a tenderer debt,
Heaven's own sweetest mercy is not to forget;
Its influence softens the present, and flings
A grace, like the ivy, wherever it clings.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Past, Forgetting

“Austerity measures constitute retrogression in human rights, in contravention of articles 2 and 5 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, imposed top-down and never legitimized by popular referendum. Moreover, the “bail-out” of the banking system was undemocratic and inequitable because a “private debt” was rescued through public money, namely, by increasing the public debt, at the expense of social justice. The general feeling of malaise was expressed in the statement that Governments seem to have adopted the elitist view that “banks are too big to fail and bankers too big to jail”, concern being expressed about the dangers of privatization of essential services, including water, and the widespread phenomenon of privatizing profit and socializing cost.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

Money, Justice, Feeling, Water

“Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-British politician, playwright and writer

St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act II, sc. iv.

Death

“ We used many techniques, but probably the most common is that we will go to a country that has resources that our corporations covet- like oil- and we will arrange a huge loan to that country from an organization like the World Bank or one of its sisters. But almost all of the money goes to U. S. corporations, not to the country itself, corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, General Motors, General Electric, these types of organizations, and they build huge infrastructure projects in the country- power plants, highways, ports, industrial parks- things that serve the very rich and seldom even reach the poor.In fact the poor suffer because the loans have to be repaid, and they are huge loans, and the repayment of them means that poor won’t get education, health, and other social services and the country is left holding a huge debt, by intention. We go back, we economic hitmen, to this country and say, “Look, you owe us a lot of money. You can’t repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh”.”

John Perkins (1945) American author

Zeitgeist Addendum (2008)

Money, Health, World, Education

“A historical figure gives up leaving an unpayable debt.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

2 June, 2014, after the announcement of the abdication of King Juan Carlos I. As President, 2014 Source: El Confidencial http://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2014-06-02/rajoy-renuncia-una-figura-historica-que-deja-una-impagable-deuda_139969/

“Put down the banks, and if this country could not be carried through the longest war against her most powerful enemy without ever knowing the want of a dollar, without dependence on the traitorous classes of her citizens, without bearing hard on the resources of the people, or loading the public with an indefinite burden of debt, I know nothing of my countrymen. Not by any novel project, not by any charlatanerie, but by ordinary and well-experienced means; by the total prohibition of all private paper at all times, by reasonable taxes in war aided by the necessary emissions of public paper of circulating size, this bottomed on special taxes, redeemable annually as this special tax comes in, and finally within a moderate period.”

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

Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1815. http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/jefferson/gallatin1.html ME 14:356 Posthumous publications, On financial matters

War, People, Time, Dependency

“We owe nothing in our origins from Adam Smith, Ricardo, Pareto, Proudhon, Bakunin, Karl Marx, Lenin, or any of the rest of the political philosophies. We do owe a debt to J. Willard Gibbs, Nikola Tesla, Steinmetz, Mac and John Rusk, and a thousand other American chemists, engineers, scientists, and technologists.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Howard Scott interviewed at Radio station KYW, Cleveland Interview with Howard Scott, 19 November 1964. Transcript online at technocracyincorporated.org, 2006.

“By 1939 the national debt had reached 37.4 billion marks. The reemployment of millions of jobless and the rearmament of German military forces had been financed by borrowing gigantic sums of money. Even Goebbels, who otherwise mocked the government’s financial experts as narrow-minded misers, expressed concern in his diary about the exploding deficit.”

Götz Aly (1947) German journalist, historian and social scientist

Source: Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (2007), p. 39

Money

“A man who murders another shortens by a few brief years the life of a human being; but he who votes to increase the burden of debts upon the people of the United States assumes a graver responsibility.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

First Speech Against Unconditional Repeal (9 February 1893)

Life, People

“In my opinion the Government can do more to remedy the economic ills of the people by a system of rigid economy in public expenditure than can be accomplished through any other action. The costs of our national and local governments combined now stand at a sum close to $100 for each inhabitant of the land. A little less than one-third of this is represented by national expenditure, and a little more than two-thirds by local expenditure. It is an ominous fact that only the National Government is reducing its debt. Others are increasing theirs at about $1,000,000,000 each year. The depression that overtook business, the disaster experienced in agriculture, the lack of employment and the terrific shrinkage in all values which our country experienced in a most acute form in 1920, resulted in no small measure from the prohibitive taxes which were then levied on all productive effort. The establishment of a system of drastic economy in public expenditure, which has enabled us to pay off about one-fifth of the national debt since 1919, and almost cut in two the national tax burden since 1921, has been one of the main causes in reestablishing a prosperity which has come to include within its benefits almost every one of our inhabitants. Economy reaches everywhere. It carries a blessing to everybody.”

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)

People, Business, Effort, Country

“In his (Barack Obama's) distorted understanding of economics, when anyone, but especially the rich get a tax break or pay less in taxes, someone else has to pay the difference or the supposed shortfall adds to the debt. His assumption, typical of most Democrats and Republicans, is the government is “owed” a portion of the fruits of our labor. It never occurs to him that perhaps the government has no business taking money from people who earn it in the first place. He never thinks that the solution is to stop government spending and stop robbing Peter to pay Paul.He and other members of the ruling elite can only see the economy as a pie, with only so much to go around. If one person gets “more,” someone has to do with “less.” It never occurs to them that the free market is like a bakery that can produce many pies, and bigger pies, and different kinds of pies so that everyone has their fill.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The State of the Union is Still a State of War http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7189"

Money, People, Understanding, Business

“Alexander Bain was probably the first modern thinker whose primary concern was with psychology itself He has been credited with writing the first 'comprehensive treatise having psychology as its sole purpose'. His two-volume systematic work, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), was the standard British text for almost half a century, until Stout's replaced it. He also founded Mind (1876-), the first psychological journal in any country. His work requires close attention, because it is the meeting-point of experimental sensory-motor physiology and the association psychology. His influence on the conceptions of later workers was direct and extremely important. Ferrier studied classics and philosophy under Bain at Aberdeen (first class honours, 1863). When he and Jackson acknowledge their intellectual debts or make references to psychology, the names most often mentioned are Bain and Spencer-the figures whose work was the culmination of the association psychology in its traditional form.”

Robert Maxwell Young (1935–2019) American medical historian

Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. p. 101

Sense, Study, Country

“In contrast to Smith’s incomplete modeling, his follower, David Ricardo, provides a coherent setting— basically, the first macroeconomic model—that can be tested, modified, and applied. Although Ricardo is surely narrower and less imaginative and insightful than Smith, he is also a lot better organized. That is why Ricardo’s analysis of macroeconomics—for example, of the implications of public debt—is more coherent and useful than Smith’s.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 10

Imagination

“Lacan conceives the difference between the two deaths as the difference being real (biological) death and its symbolization, the settling of accounts the accomplishment of symbolic destiny (deathbed confession in Catholicism, for example). This gap can be filled in various ways; it can contain either sublime beauty or fearsome monsters: in Antigone's case, her symbolic death, her exclusion from the symbolic community of the city, precedes her actual death and imbues her character with sublime beauty, whereas the ghost of Hamlet's father represents the opposite case, - actual death unaccompanied by symbolic death, without a settling of accounts - which is why he returns as a frightful apparition until his debt has been repaid. This place between the two deaths, a place of sublime beauty as well as terrifying monsters, is the site of das Ding, of the real-traumatic Kernel in the midst of symbolic order.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

150
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Death, Beauty, Way, Communication

“Thank you very much. Good Heavens. Um, I can't thank you enough, Hollywood Foreign Press, for honouring me in this capacity. I don't wish to burden you with my debts, which are heavy and numerous but, um, I think that everybody involved in the making of this film knows that we owe all our pride and all our joy to the genius of Jane Austen. And, um, it occurred to me to wonder how she would react to an evening like this… [Puts down statue on stage, reads paper] This is what I came up with”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

Thinking, Reading, Joy

“Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
Variant: Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life".

Life, Dead

“The word grace evidently implies that there is no antecedent merit. And in this way the apostle to the Romans appears to argue, when he says, 'And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.' All this is perfectly intelligible, even in the conduct of liberal and magnificent human characters. They frequently bestow their gifts from a pure spirit of liberality, without the smallest previous claim on the score of merit. And shall not God, whose perfections are infinite, do more than this?”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

De causa Dei contra Pelagium

God, Way, Intelligence, Appearance

“Expressed egotism is, of course, no reason necessarily to disregard someone’s work, but it is a warning signal. If someone can evaluate his work so poorly, is the work itself likely to be better? In many of his areas of intellectual interest, Popper’s work is wanting.
Hayek did more to advance Popper professionally early in his career than anyone else, and Popper remembered his personal debt to Hayek. Over the years, he wrote him a number of appreciative letters.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Personality

“Social Science … led us to the fallacy that, since all men have their being in culture and as a result of culture, they owe a debt to that culture which even a lifetime of altruism could not repay.”

David Riesman (1909–2002) American Sociologist

cited in Essays on Individuality (Philadelphia: 1958), p. 110

Men, Science

“There will have to be three objects for farming and farm products. First, we must end over-production. The over-production that is taking place in Europe and the United States is damaging and obscenely wasteful. It is damaging to the environment, and it is obviously obscenely wasteful when products that are the result of over-production are being burnt in an attempt to maintain prices…Secondly, we must end export dumping. Instead, we must promote aid and trade policies that encourage self-reliant production, which is more protective of the local economy and less dependent on the economies of western Europe and of the United States…Thirdly, what happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/nov/23/general-agreement-on-tariffs-and-trade-1 in the House of Commons (23 November 1990). 1990s

World, Dependency, Country

“A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Letter to Robert Morris (30 April 1781)

“Did America owe something to the slaves whose labor had been stolen? … That debt…is best discharged through memory, because the slaves are dead and their descendants…are better off as a consequence of their ancestors being hauled from Africa to America.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 8

Memory, Dead

“Some people, when they do someone a favor, are always looking for a chance to call it in. And some aren't, but they're still aware of it--still regard it as a debt. But others don't even do that. They're like a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another as a vine to bear grapes again in season.
V, 6
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

People, Chance

“Dialogue in Hell:
Twenty-First Dialogue

Machiavelli: I am afraid that you are somewhat prejudiced against loans;… modern economists today expressly recognize that, far from impoverishing the state, public debts enrich it. Will you allow me to explain how?
Montesquieu:…. I should first of all like to know from whom you will ask so much capital, and for what reason you will ask it.
Machiavelli: For that, foreign wars are a great help. In the great states, they permit the borrowing of five or six hundred millions; one manages so as to spend only half or two-thirds, and the rest finds its place in the treasury for domestic expenditures.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

War, Hell, Help

“Hayek may still have lessons to teach us. The policies he recommended during the Great Depression may have been badly flawed but his insight that prosperity cannot be restored by unending expansion of debt may have some value at a time when the limits of “Keynesian” quantitative easing are becoming clear. It is in any case far from obvious that Keynes would have supported a continuation of QE once a disastrous collapse had been averted. “Keynesianism” is a confection of Keynes’s more mechanical disciples, not an indication of how this mercurially brilliant mind would have responded to our present dilemmas. Again, Hayek’s claim that nothing can be done to mitigate the impact of free markets on social cohesion was dangerously misguided. But he was right to point out that capitalism cannot be remodelled to fit some conception of an ideally fair distribution of resources. Whether any kind of social democracy can be reconciled with the anarchic energies of global markets is an open question.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Friedrich Hayek I knew, and what he got right - and wrong (2015)

Democracy, Question, Support, Time

“Over a period of 500 years the City has supported deregulation at every turn. The consequences of this are massive. You had fraudulent products – the cause of the crash – debt being repackaged as an asset and then being used as leverage. The assets they held and credit they generated were on a ratio of 50-1. There was no effective regulation of this, no effective oversight. They have been exposed by the bailout. They have refused more than ten years of requests from us [London Citizens UK organisation] and suddenly they agree to meet. I think they are concerned that the political parties will move to a more manufacturing, less financially-based economy.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Red Pepper magazine, 22 November 2009 http://www.redpepper.org.uk/confronting-the-city/

Support, Thinking

“Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (13 July 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Time

“The Coalition will end the waste, repay the debt, stop the big new taxes and, above all else, stop the boats.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

2010

“What is the "cost of capital" to a, firm in a world in which funds are used to acquire assets whose yields are uncertain; and in which capital can be obtained by many different media, ranging from pure debt instruments, representing money-fixed claims, to pure equity issues, giving holders only the right to a pro-rata share in the uncertain venture? This question has vexed at least three classes of economists: (1) the corporation finance specialist concerned with the techniques of financing firms so as to ensure their survival and growth; (2) the managerial economist concerned with capital budgeting; and (3) the economic theorist concerned with explaining investment behavior at both the micro and macro levels.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Franco Modigliani and Merton H. Miller. "The cost of capital, corporation finance and the theory of investment." The American economic review (1958): 261-297.

Money, World, Behavior, Question

“I do not think that word “compromise” means what Mr. Ryan thinks it means. Above all, he failed to offer the one thing the White House won’t, can’t bend on: an end to extortion over the debt ceiling. Yet even this ludicrously unbalanced offer was too much for conservative activists, who lambasted Mr. Ryan for basically leaving health reform intact.Does this mean that we’re going to hit the debt ceiling? Quite possibly; nobody really knows, but careful observers are giving no better than even odds that any kind of deal will be reached before the money runs out. Beyond that, however, our current state of dysfunction looks like a chronic condition, not a one-time event. Even if the debt ceiling is raised enough to avoid immediate default, even if the government shutdown is somehow brought to an end, it will only be a temporary reprieve. Conservative activists are simply not willing to give up on the idea of ruling through extortion, and the Obama administration has decided, wisely, that it will not give in to extortion.So how does this end? How does America become governable again?”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Regarding the ongoing 2013 U.S. government shutdown
[Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/krugman-the-dixiecrat-solution.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1381867276-0uKEJS5eBZAKIo/by2ipKQ, The Dixiecrat Solution, New York Times, October 13, 2013, October 15, 2013]
The New York Times Columns

Money, Health, Idea, Thinking

“The very wise and wealthy financiers of the world--going way back, even before Rothschild's time--have observed that the world was a pretty rocky place to live in, and that nations were always fighting over something or other, there was always somebody who was trying to conquer somebody else, and wars were universal. Too bad about that, but that's the way it is. So we--the bankers--found out that if we loan money to them that we'll get paid back - they don't question what the interest rate is because they're fighting a war! And if they can win the war they can just plunder the victim and pay us whatever we want out of the plunder - it doesn't cost them anything really. Then the issue comes up of what happens if one of these nations decides not to pay us? Ah! The answer is very simple: if they refuse to pay us back we'll finance an opposing nation, a revolutionary group somewhere else to become an enemy of that nation and attack it, and destroy it, invade it. We'll create another war, in other words, in order to get our money back, we'll finance this side to attack that side. And so, by financing all sides in a war, and keeping the world divided up into warring fractions so that no one unit is particularly stronger than the other, the banks can continue to finance all sides of wars forever, and always collect their interest, because they have the ability of putting one nation against another nation against another nation to collect their debts.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

From the documentary Corporate Fascism: The Destruction of America's Middle Class (2011) http://www.youtube.com/embed/hTbvoiTJKIs?autoplay=1&start=2094&end=2183

Money, War, World, Way

“There is nothing new or unusual about the Tory commitment to protect the environment. The last thing we want is to leave environmental debts for our children to clear up…It's we Conservatives who are not merely friends of the Earth—we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come. The core of Tory philosophy and for the case for protecting the environment are the same. No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease. This Government intends to meet the terms of that lease in full.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (14 October 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107352 Third term as Prime Minister

Life, Children

“Thus money is almost always something hovering between a commodity and a debt-token. This is probably why coins—pieces of silver or gold that are already valuable commodities in themselves, but that, being stamped with the emblem of local authority, became even more valuable—still sit in our heads as the quintessential form of money. They most perfectly straddle the divide that defines what money is in the first place. What's more, the relation between the two was a matter of constant political conversation. In other words, the battle between state and market, between governments and merchants is not inherent to the human condition.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Four, "Cruelty and Redemption", p. 75

Money

“Why China suddenly is a question? Of course, there has been the concern that they may not be giving loans that are concessional, and the danger is that these countries might go back into the debt, some of the countries that they have been forgiven their debts. This I found to be a valid point, maybe not with Tanzania, because we don’t have much in terms of this huge Chinese development assistance.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On China's loans to Africa. Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Question, Country

“Enduring as heaven and earth—no love however ancient can ever die;
Timeless as light and shadow—no debt of breeze and moonlight can ever be repaid.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 42

Love, Light

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

First Address to Congress (23 November 1797) http://books.google.com/books?id=_EeUpTCXs1sC&pg=PA115&dq=%22The+consequences+arising+from+the+continual+accumulation+of+public+debts+in+other+countries+ought+to+admonish+us+to+be+careful+to+prevent+their+growth+in+our+own%22&hl=en&ei=wqNLTKb7G42NnQeo_52CDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20consequences%20arising%20from%20the%20continual%20accumulation%20of%20public%20debts%20in%20other%20countries%20ought%20to%20admonish%20us%20to%20be%20careful%20to%20prevent%20their%20growth%20in%20our%20own%22&f=false 1790s

Country

“We owe the Aboriginal peoples a debt that is four centuries old. It is their turn to become full partners in developing an even greater Canada. And the reconciliation required may be less a matter of legal texts than of attitudes of the heart.”

Romeo LeBlanc (1927–2009) Canadian politician

Source: speech on the occasion of the presentation of the 1996 Native Role Models, February 23, 1996

People, Heart

“When Piedmont died, I had to pay him back for my life. I found out there's another debt to pay — for the privilege of being alive. I thought Sophie was my reward for trying to live a good life. Uh uh. There is no payoff — not now.”

Bill Murray (1950) American actor and comedian

The Razor's Edge (1984)

Life

“The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage…
Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.
I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.
And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride….”

Yanis Varoufakis (1961) Greek-Australian political economist and author, Greek finance minister

Minister-no-more http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/06/minister-no-more/ at yanisvaroufakis.eu, 2015/07/06; cited in: I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride http://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2015/jul/06/yanis-varoufakis-resignation-statement-creditors-loathing-with-pride, in: theguardian.com, 6 July 2015.

People, History, Idea, Help

Quotes about debt page 2

Quotes about debt
page 2