Quotes about finance
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“As the year draws to a close, the Congress of the Philippines is once more mandated by the Constitution to enact a national budget for the ensuing year. Section 29(1), Article VI of the Constitution provides that “No money shall be paid out of the Treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation by law.” And so today, Mr. President, I rise to sponsor, as Chairman of your Committee on Finance, the General Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2015.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Money, Law, Drawing

“Money talks: financing the periphery buys Berlin a leading role recasting the eurozone governance framework. The recent ‘six pack’ of legislative reforms hints at what’s to come: institutionalized fiscal discipline and an excessive imbalances procedure that protects against future moral hazard. The whole eurozone will tilt toward the German surplus model as we get more fiscal integration and more German leverage.”

Ian Bremmer (1969) American political scientist

"Germany Will Never Leave the Eurozone," http://blogs.ft.com/the-a-list/2011/10/18/germany-will-never-leave-the-eurozone/?Authorised=false#axzz1bgrJPMeD Financial Times (October 18, 2011).

Money, Future

“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

“Countries that benefit from World Bank financing should ensure that all loans they request and all foreign direct investment they receive are used in a manner that advances the enjoyment of human rights and does not result in the enrichment of a few at the expense of the many.”

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, Country

“In finance as in life, there is often a huge chasm between what is expected and what actually transpires.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 2, Measuring The Beast, p. 71.

Life

“No serious challenge on the Left exists to Third Way thinking anywhere in the world. This is hardly surprising as globalisation punishes hard any country that tries to run its economy by ignoring the realities of the market or prudent public finances. In this strictly narrow sense, and in the urgent need to remove rigidities and incorporate flexibility in capital, product and labour markets, we are all "Thatcherite" now.”

Peter Mandelson (1953) British Labour politician

"There's plenty of life in the 'new' Third Way yet", The Times, 10 June 2002, p. 16.

World, Way, Thinking, Reality

“On Hillary Clinton's watch at the State Department, America's interests were diminished in every corner of the world. She compromised our national secrets, dissembled to the families of the slain, and jettisoned her most profound beliefs to gain presidential power. For the last three decades, the Clintons have lived at the intersection of money and politics, trading their political influence to enrich their personal finances. They embody the term “.” It disgusts the American people and causes them to lose faith in our political process.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Money, People, Secret, World

“I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised the problems of the Kurdish people in Iraq, and I am sure that they will be grateful for that. Although the Government may not allow the export of military hardware to Iraq, is it not just as beneficial to the Iraqi Government to be given banking facilities, credits and increased trade? They have exactly the same effect of propping up the Iraqi economy, which is used to finance the war machine that is practising genocide against the Kurdish people.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/jul/14/foreign-affairs in the House of Commons (14 July 1989). 1980s

War, People, Problem

“The business of financing is in a poor way. There is no plan found, or scheme digested, for mending our money. There are a thousand projects on foot; but none appears to be taken up on a practical footing.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

Money, Way, Business, Appearance

“The relatively strong Jewish element in Hungary was a particular thorn in [Hitler's] flesh, especially as many Jews were eminent in Hungarian finance, commerce and industry, in the press and in the professions. Of course, the bourgeois middle classes cherished a feeling of resentment that the executive posts and the offices in the liberal professions most in demand were in Jewish hands. The Jews supported each other with the solidarity of their race and earned more than twenty-five percent of the national income. After the First World War, there had been a wave of open anti-Semitism in Hungary. Even writers with left-wing sympathies have pointed out that nine-tenths of the higher positions of Béla Kun’s regime were filled by Jews. It was, therefore, humanly understandable that the crimes of the Communists were attributed to the Jews. But the innate Hungarian sense of fairness and justice, strengthened by the efforts of both Catholic and Protestant Churches to suppress all forms of racial prejudice, soon re-established good relations between Jews and non-Jews.”

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

Source: Memoirs, p. 208

War, World, Justice, Feeling

“Economists’ instincts are that uncertainty about current prices, future prices, and the real meaning of nominal trade-offs between the present and the future; distortions introduced by the failure of government finance to be inflation-neutral; windfall redistributions; and the focusing of attention not on preferences, factors of production, and technologies but on predicting the future evolution of nominal magnitudes must degrade the functioning of the price system and reduce the effectiveness of the market economy at providing consumer utility. The cumulative jump in the price level as a result of the inflation of the 1970s may have been very expensive to the United States in terms of the associated reduction in human welfare.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Ch. 6 : "America’s Peacetime Inflation: The 1970s" in Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy (1997) edited by Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer

Failure, Future

“men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

archy and mehitabel (1927), what the ants are saying

Men, Money, World, Learning

“Button-cute, rapier-keen, wafer-thin and pauper-poor is S. J. Perelman, whose tall, stooping figure is better known to the twilit half-world of five continents than to Publishers' Row. That he possesses the power to become invisible to finance companies; that his laboratory is tooled up to manufacture Frankenstein-type monsters on an incredible scale; and that he owns one of the rare mouths in which butter has never melted are legends treasured by every schoolboy.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) p. xii.

World

“The US owes the world. The US "superpower" cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid.The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned.When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.”

Paul Craig Roberts (1939) American economist

"A Bankrupt Superpower," CounterPunch (2008-03-18)

Money, War, World, Cats

“e) the phrase, if I may quote, (1) “and for such other purposes as may be hereafter directed by the President” under Section 8 of Presidential Decree No. 910 and (2) “to finance the priority infrastructures development projects” under Section 12 of Presidential Decree No. 1869, as amended by Presidential Decree No. 1993, for both failing the sufficiency of standard test in violation of the principle of non-delegability of legislative power.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Quotes

“The courts have properly determined that a man should neither be able to force a woman to have an abortion nor to prevent her from having one, should she so choose. Justice therefore dictates that if a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support. Or, put another way, autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.”

Karen DeCrow (1937–2014) American lawyer

New York Times Magazine, 9 May 1982, letter to the editor Source: New York Times Magazine, letter to the editor http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/09/magazine/l-no-headline-123813.html, 1982-05-09

Women, Men, Justice, Way

“Tonight Vietnam must hold the center of our attention, but across the world problems and opportunities crowd in on the American Nation. I will discuss them fully in the months to come, and I will follow the five continuing lines of policy that America has followed under its last four Presidents. The first principle is strength. Tonight I can tell you that we are strong enough to keep all of our commitments. We will need expenditures of $58.3 billion for the next fiscal year to maintain this necessary defense might. While special Vietnam expenditures for the next fiscal year are estimated to increase by $5.8 billion, I can tell you that all the other expenditures put together in the entire federal budget will rise this coming year by only $0.6 billion. This is true because of the stringent cost-conscious economy program inaugurated in the Defense Department, and followed by the other departments of government. A second principle of policy is the effort to control, and to reduce, and to ultimately eliminate the modern engines of destruction. We will vigorously pursue existing proposals—and seek new ones—to control arms and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. A third major principle of our foreign policy is to help build those associations of nations which reflect the opportunities and the necessities of the modern world. By strengthening the common defense, by stimulating world commerce, by meeting new hopes, these associations serve the cause of a flourishing world. We will take new steps this year to help strengthen the Alliance for Progress, the unity of Europe, the community of the Atlantic, the regional organizations of developing continents, and that supreme association—the United Nations. We will work to strengthen economic cooperation, to reduce barriers to trade, and to improve international finance.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

World, Hope, Communication, Problem

“The enemy's new strategy is to finance and organize various groups under the cover of women's or student movements.”

Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei (1956) Iranian politician

Women bear brunt of crackdown on civil liberties in Iran https://archive.is/20130629123951/www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/27/africa/ME-FEA-GEN-Iran-Crackdown-on-Women.php?page=1 April 26, 2007

Women

“At one end of the spectrum are the terrorist gangs within our borders, and the terrorist states which finance and arm them. At the other are the Hard Left operating inside our system, conspiring to use union power and the apparatus of local government to break, defy and subvert the law.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

The Second Carlton Lecture (26 November 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105799 Second term as Prime Minister

Law

“The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports the same inherent malignancies and perverse incentives of government, down to the racial-spoils system.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Silent Co-Conspirators In Military Mass Shootings" http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/the-silent-co-conspirators-in-military.html Economic Policy Journal, September 22, 2013. 2010s, 2013

Sport

“I will not be proposing a course which has been under some public discussion recently — deficit financing. It is wholly inappropriate to our economic situation. In its least extreme form it is based on the theory that additional money generated by a Government deficit (and given currency, as necessary, by use of the printing press) will stimulate consumption and thereby production, in time to match the excess money with goods before real inflationary harm is done. Unfortunately we don't, and can't, produce more than a small fraction of what we consume, and increased consumption would merely mean increased imports without matching exports; and a severe balance of payment crisis, which would destroy Hong Kong's credit and confidence in the Hong Kong dollar; and which we could not cure without coming close to ruining ourselves. Keynes was not writing with our situation in mind. In this hard world we have to earn before we spend.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 27, 1963, page 50.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Money, World, Confidence, Time

“But to my mind, it is not a politician's job to turn policeman. The most important thing about transparency of electoral financing is that one does not get the wrong sort of associations emerging. And they cannot emerge if one does not know the source of the money.”

Paula Lehtomäki (1972) Finnish politician

Election financiers Did the ministers and others know whose money they were getting? http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Election+financiers+/1135236506359 Helsingin Sanomat 20.5.2008

Money

“Total Revenues amounting to P2.337 trillion will finance the proposed 2015 national budget, representing a Revenue Effort of 16.5% and a growth rate of 15.8%. Tax Revenues, Mr. President, in particular, is targeted at P2.194 trillion, representing a Tax Effort of 15.5%.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Effort

“Nine months ago, our campaign began. And when it began, we had no political organization, no money, and not much name recognition outside of the state of Vermont. A lot has happened in nine months.
And what has happened is, I think, the American people have responded to a series of basic truths, and that is that we have today a campaign finance system which is corrupt, which is undermining American democracy, which allows Wall Street and billionaires to pour huge sums of money into the political process to elect the candidates of their choice.
And aligned with a corrupt campaign finance system is a rigged economy. And that's an economy where ordinary Americans are working longer hours for low wagers. They are worried to death about the future of their kids. And yet they are seeing almost all new income and all new wealth going to the top 1 percent.
And then in addition to that, the American people are looking around and they see a broken criminal justice system. They see more people in jail in the United States of America than any other country on earth, 2.2 million. We're spending $80 billion a year locking up fellow Americans.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2010s, 2016, Democratic Presidential Debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (11 February 2016)

Death, Money, People, Truth

“But public works, economic protectionism, cheap money, 'deficit-financed government spending,' and 'the animal spirits of the spendthrift' in the service of boosting 'consumption demand'… Doesn't Keynesianism simply appeal to the worst in human nature?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius?! (Part 2) http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/08/john-maynard-keynes-wheres-genius-part-2.html Economic Policy Journal, August 23, 2013. 2010s, 2013

Money, Nature, Animals

“[Winston Churchill] is the servant, not of the British public, or of the British Empire, but of International Jewish Finance. This charge must be preferred against a man who has so signally violated British tradition in the course of this war.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Broadcast, Radio Cologne, 8 April 1943.

War

“The U. S. alleges it wants to democratize [the Middle East] whilst it seeks to reverse election results not legally or through polls, but by force, fostering chaos and supporting, financing and arming the corrupt.”

Khaled Mashal (1956) Palestinian terrorist

Al Jazeera Talk to Jazeera - Khaled Meshaal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8TTjb54GzM March 5, 2008. 2008

Support

“I met Donald in 1979 when I was sent to New York to organize Ronald Reagan's campaign for President. He and his father Fred Trump were members of the Reagan for President finance committee. We became good friends. I was invited to two of his weddings. He attended my wedding in Washington DC. He is very smart, very tough and can be very very funny. He is also very tall.”

Roger Stone (1952) American lobbyist

Wikinews interviews three figures from Donald Trump's political past (October 2015)

Wedding

“When it comes to philosophical convictions, most conservatives more closely resemble their beltway liberal friends than Republican Party voters. From the country's dismal finances and propagandized population, a sizable segment has concluded that conservative power-brokers and liberal power-brokers are indistinguishable.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump Doesn’t Need to Talk Like A Conservative," http://www.unz.com/imercer/trump-doesnt-need-to-talk-like-a-conservative/ The Unz Review, March 19, 2016. 2010s, 2016

Country

“Very few of the heroes of the Golden Age of American finance had much interest in the solid realities of what underlay their structure of stocks and bonds and credits.”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter VIII, Thorstein Veblen, p. 224

Age, Reality

“This paper integrates elements from the theory of agency, the theory of property rights and the theory of finance to develop a theory of the ownership structure of the firm. We define the concept of agency costs, show its relationship to the 'separation and control' issue, investigate the nature of the agency costs generated by the existence of debt and outside equity, demonstrate who bears the costs and why, and investigate the Pareto optimality of their existence. We also provide a new definition of the firm, and show how our analysis of the factors influencing the creation and issuance of debt and equity claims is a special case of the supply side of the completeness of markets problem.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Source: "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure", 1976, p. 305 Abstract

Optimism, Nature, Problem

“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).

“The people of the United States will not tolerate another deep depression that arises not from any lack of natural resources, productive capacity or man and brain power, but solely from imperfections in the functioning of the system of finance capitalism.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part V, Chapter XIX, The Reservoir Plan and Tradition, p. 234 (See also; Karl Marx, Capital)
Storage and Stability (1937)

People, Nature

“Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

A shattering moment in America's fall from power (2008)

Future, Dependency, Country

“First and foremost must come the recognition and the realization that education is not a luxury in colonial areas, but it is as much a necessity as in free countries. It is an amenity to which every citizen has a right. It is a social service which should be the first charge on the finances of a country. And in advanced countries it is not uncommon for the state to spend as much as 25 per cent of their revenue on education.”

A.D. Patel (1905–1969) Fijian politician

1954 statement calling for more spending on education.

Education, Country

“The basic insight of the finance conception was that such a firm could be more tightly controlled by strict accounting. This progression does not imply, however, that one conception of control caused the emergence of its successor. New conceptions of control evolved out of key interactions among firms and between firms and the state.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 16

“On campuses across this country, embedded in the leadership of every radical "anti-war" protest group, are organizations that promote the culture of Islamic terrorism and its anti-Western, anti-Israeli and anti-American agendas. One that will serve as an example for the others is the radical Muslim Student Association (MSA). The Muslim Student Association is an organization financed by the Saudis and also by student funds at every university where it operates. The ideas and enthusiasms that it promotes among impressionable college students should give every American cause for concern.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

[David, Horowitz, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz.html, "As a former 'Radical,' I see the threat of Militant Islam on our Campuses,", jewishworldreview.com, April 08, 2003, 2010-01-04]
2003

War, Idea, Universe, Country

“The silhouette was named for Etienne de Silhouette, the notoriously stingy finance minister for Louis XV, who ironically was himself incapable of casting a shadow, due to lycanthropy.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

Source: The Areas of My Expertise (2005), p. 76

“I think that the Saudis have a multiple level of responsibilities, first and foremost, stopping their own citizens from continuing the financing for extremists. And, you know, Saudi financing is still a major source of revenue for terrorist groups inside Syria, inside Iraq elsewhere.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech on fighting ISIS (November 20, 2015)

Thinking

“You do not need to be a millionaire to feel successful or be successful. Financial wealth is only one of many possible indicators of success. However, to achieve your dreams and life goals you’re going to need money. And making it requires financial planning and goalsetting. I do not know of any successful person who has been able to simply ignore their finances.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Life, Money, Dreams, Feeling

“The US is not a superpower. The US is a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will.Washington still hasn’t learned this. American hubris can lead the administration and Congress into a bailout solution that the rest of the world, which has to finance it, might not accept.”

Paul Craig Roberts (1939) American economist

"The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation," http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09242008.html CounterPunch (2008-09-24)

World, Learning, Dependency, Country

“The concept of a random walk is simple but rich for its many applications, not only in finance but also in physics and the description of natural phenomena. It is arguably one of the most founding concepts in modern physics as well as in finance, as it underlies the theories of elementary particles, which are the building blocks of our universe, as well as those describing the complex organization of matter around us.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 2, Fundamentals Of Financial Markets, p. 38.

Nature, Universe

“The military front in its traditional meaning has disappeared and has been replaced by something structurally different. As a result of a set of variables such as globalisation, information technology, international finance, etc., we have now moved from a geopolitics based on space to a geopolitics based on flows.”

Corrado Maria Daclon (1963) Italian journalist and scientist

From Geopolitics of Environment, A Wider Approach to the Global Challenges, La Comunità Internazionale, no. 4, (2007)

“If we hold the married man accountable for finances gone legally awry, then the married woman should be held accountable for children who go awry.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 250.

Children

“Opium use is a quick way of showing a person’s character. Within months some people would be stealing from family and friends, but there were people who never did that kind of thing. I used my salary to finance my habit.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

People, Family, Way, Personality

“Nothing in finance is more fatuous and harmful, in our opinion, than the firmly established attitude of common stock investors regarding questions of corporate management. That attitude is summed up in the phrase: "If you don't like the management, sell your stock." […] The public owners seem to have abdicated all claim to control over the paid superintendents of their property”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 18

Question

“Taxation is by definition legalized robbery. Clearly, it is initiated coercion. As such, no Objectivist can in good conscience support it. So, naturally, most of them don't. Ayn Rand, in her essay in The Virtue of Selfishness entitled "Government Financing in a Free Society," states emphatically that the financing of the state in a free society would be voluntary. But can it be?”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

“The Contradiction in Objectivism,” 1968

Support, Nature, Selfishness

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism…We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new…The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? We can all of us recall, at any rate, one very memorable admission that the great system of Gladstonian finance had not reached perfection. That admission was made by no other person than Mr. Gladstone himself in his famous manifesto of 1874, when he promised the most extraordinary reduction of which our taxation is capable. Surely there is as much room for improvement in taxation as in every other work of fallible man, provided that we always cherish the just and sacred principle of taxation that it is equality of private sacrifice for public good. Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. Are to we assume that it has all been wrong? Is my right hon. friend going to propose its repeal or the repeal of any of it; or has all past interference been wise, and we have now come to the exact point where not another step can be taken without mischief? …other countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them…In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10.

People, School, History, Thinking

“What has been the state of things since 1853? It is useless to blink the fact that not merely within the circle of the public departments and of Cabinets, but throughout the country at large, and within the precincts of this House—the guardians of the purse of the people—the spirit of public economy has been relaxed; charges upon the public funds of every kind have been admitted from time to time upon slight examination; every man's petition and prayer for this or that expenditure has been conceded with a facility which I do not hesitate to say you have only to continue for some five or ten years longer in order to bring the finances of the country into a state of absolute confusion.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1859/jul/21/financial-policy-of-the-late-government in the House of Commons (21 July 1859) against Benjamin Disraeli's Budget. 1850s

People, Time, Housing, Country

“Armenian crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Ottoman Turkish and Kurdish populations of eastern and southern Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath have been forgotten amidst congressional preoccupation with placating the vocal and richly financed Armenian lobby.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

Armenian crime amnesia? (2007)

War, World

“[Strategic account management programs include] special activities… such as pricing, products, services, distribution, and information sharing’ and that they involve ‘in addition to marketing and sales, functional groups such as manufacturing, research and development, and finance.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A configurational perspective on key account management", 2002, p. 40-42; as cited in Storbacka (2007)

“Our presence will serve as an incentive for al Qaeda to grow in numbers and motivate more suicide bombers. An indefinite presence, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, will continue to drain our financial resources, undermine our national defense, demoralize our military and exacerbate our financial crisis. All this will be welcomed by Osama Bin Laden, just as he planned it. It's actually more than he had hoped for. […] The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be much bigger, unless the dollar follows the path of the dollar-based world financial system and collapses into runaway inflation. In this case, the laws of economics and the realities of history will prove superior to the madness of maintaining a world empire financed by scraps of paper. Our military prowess, backed by a nuclear arsenal, will not suffice in overcoming the tragedy of a currency crisis. Soviet nukes did not preserve its empire or the communist economy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The end is not near https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuPeExhmuQQ, (4 March 2009) 2000s, 2006-2009

War, World, Law, Hope

“The aristocratic and the modern were inextricably combined in Joseph Schumpeter. The paradoxes of this great economist, who also served as minister of finance in the post-World War I government of Austria, are suggested by the fact that at his first teaching post, he challenged the university librarian to a duel to win freer access to books for the students. Perhaps Schumpeter was attracted to the big issues because he himself witnessed drastic changes in society.”

Samuel Bowles (1939) American economist

Source: Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change, 2005, p. 79

War, Books, World, Universe

“The Prime Minister spent a lot of time painting to you a lurid picture of what would happen under a Labour Government in pursuit of what he called a Continental conception. He has forgotten that Socialist theory was developed by Robert Owen in Britain long before Karl Marx. He has forgotten that Australia, New Zealand, whose peoples have played so great a part in the war, and the Scandinavian countries have had Socialist Governments for years, to the great benefit of their peoples, with none of those dreadful consequences…When he talks of the danger of a secret police…he forgets that these things were actually experienced in this country only under the Tory Government of Lord Liverpool in the years of repression when the British people who had saved Europe from Napoleon were suffering deep distress. He has forgotten many things, including, when he talks of the danger of Labour mismanaging finance, his own disastrous record at the Exchequer over the gold standard.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (5 June 1945), quoted in The Times (6 June 1945), p. 2. Churchill had claimed in broadcast that a Labour government would have to rely on a Gestapo to carry out socialist policies
Leader of the Opposition

War, People, Secret, Suffering

“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

“Starting on a large scale towards the end of the 1960s in the United States and expanding rapidly ever since, corporate funding has spread during the last five years to Britain and the Continent. Ambitious exhibition programs that could not be financed through traditional sources led museums to turn to corporations for support. The larger, more lavishly appointed these shows and their catalogues became, however, the more glamour the audiences began to expect.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

1980s, "Museums, Managers of Consciousness," 1983

Support

“The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the “public opinion” that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid “progress” enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, p. 408, as translated by Joseph Pryce

History, Future

“In former times, when the honor of work had some hold upon us, it was the practice of a maker to give his name to the product … But, as finance capitalism grew and men and property separated, a significant change occurred in names: the new designations shed all connection with the individual and become “General,” “Standard,” “International,” “American.””

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 141.

Men, Change, Time

“Foreign relations. At no period in the past 12 years have our foreign relations been in such a satisfactory condition as they are at the present time. Our actions in the recent months have greatly strengthened the American policy of permanent peace with independence. The attitude which our Government took and maintained toward an adjustment of European reparations, by pointing out that it wits not a political but a business problem, has demonstrated its wisdom by its actual results. We desire to see Europe restored that it may resume its productivity in the increase of industry and its support in the advance of civilization. We look with great gratification at the hopeful prospect of recuperation in Europe through the Dawes plan. Such assistance as can be given through the action of the public authorities and of our private citizens, through friendly counsel and cooperation, and through economic and financial support, not for any warlike effort but for reproductive enterprise, not to provide means for unsound government financing but to establish sound business administration ' should be unhesitatingly provided.”

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)

Wisdom, Peace, Hope, Business

“The military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government, chief of which is its liberalism. Like the government, the military is freighted with pathological political correctness.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Assange is Us,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=578 WorldNetDaily.com, December 10, 2010. 2010s, 2010

Sport

“Around the globe, nations are turning these words into action. Members of the United Nations are sharing intelligence with one another, conducting joint operations, and freezing terrorist finances. While terrorists continue to carry out attacks like the terrible bombing in Islamabad last week, our joint actions have spared our citizens from many devastating blows.”

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

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

Intelligence

“Industrial production, the flow of resources in the economy, the exertion of military effort in a war, the management of finances --all require the coordination of interrelated activities. What these complex undertakings share in common is the task of constructing a statement of actions to be performed, their timing and quantity (called a program or schedule), that, if implemented, would move the system from a given initial status as much as possible towards some defined goal”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

George B. Dantzig, Mukund N. Thapa (1997) Linear Programming: 1: Introduction. p.xxi

War, Effort, Time

“The Mussolini of 1944 reasserted the socialist beliefs of his youth because he now felt that he had been cheated by the world of finance and industry: after having gained immensely from fascism,… To maintain some intellectual coherence he tried to pretend that, notwithstanding appearances, he had never deserted the socialist programme he had put forward for fascism in 1919; he had allowed certain tactical deviations in the interim, but for the most part, his basic views had never changed. In anonymous articles he now confirmed that he had been right when, in 1910, he called on the proletariat to capture power from the capitalists by a bloody revolution... He now decreed that all industrial firms employing more than 100 workers would be nationalized.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 311-312

Youth, World, Appearance, Change

“Health systems are social institutions. They do far more for society than deliver babies and pills, like a post office delivering parcels. Properly managed and adequately financed, a fair and equitable health system contributes to social cohesion and stability.”

Margaret Chan (1947) Director-General of the World Health Organization

"Exclusive Interview with WHO's Dr. Margaret Chan" http://www.usaid.gov/news-information/frontlines/global-healthiraq/exclusive-interview-whos-dr-margaret-chan, April-May 2011.

Health, Baby

“The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it. If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn't have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

David Brooks. "I Am Not Charlie Hebdo" http://archive.li/nlsvG The New York Times (January 2015) 2010s

Hate, Freedom, Universe

“In real-world Finance, they don't pay for elegance. They pay for power - predictive power.”

Robert Haugen (1942–2013) American economist

Source: The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why (1999), Chapter 13, Counterattack - The Second Wave, p. 129

World

“The war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

War, World, Parting

“Under the old constitution, a secretary of the treasury for instance, had no opportunity, save by his annual reports, of presenting any scheme or plan of finance or other matter. He had no opportunity of explaining, expounding, enforcing, or defending his views of policy; his only resort was through the medium of an organ. In the British parliament, the premier brings in his budget and stands before the nation responsible for its every item. If it is indefensible, he falls before the attacks upon it, as he ought to. This will now be the case to a limited extent under our system. In the new constitution, provision has been made by which our heads of departments can speak for themselves and the administration, in behalf of its entire policy, without resorting to the indirect and highly objectionable medium of a newspaper. It is to be greatly hoped that under our system we shall never have what is known as a government organ.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Hope

“Islam prescribes the bases of social justice. It insures that the poor have claims on the possessions of the rich, and it lays down a just policy for government and finance. It does not need to numb people's feelings and does not call on people to abandon their rights on earth and to expect them only in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam (1996), p. 16

People, Justice, Feeling

“The West has repudiated Christianity and returned to rationalism, humanism and universalism, all of which are values cherished and promoted by the Hindu view of life. But the West does not realize that the massive finances which the Christian missions collect over there in the name of doing social service in 'a poor, starved, diseased and illiterate India' is used by the missions for the nefarious work of subverting the only sane society which has survived the depredations of genocidal creeds.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

Life, Disease, Universe

“Well-being is about the combination of our love for what we do each day, the quality of our relationships, the security of our finances, the vibrancy of our physical health, and the pride we take in what we have contributed to our communities. Most importantly, it's about how these five elements interact.”

Tom Rath (1975) American author

Tom Rath, ‎James K. Harter & ‎Jim Harter (2010), Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, p. 4

Love, Health, Communication

“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

“I never burned down synagogues. It was a revolution, and Russians burned churches during their revolution. If there are many different nationalities in a country, the leadership should be divided among people by percentages. In finance, press, radio - the Jews had taken over positions. That feeling existed before Hitler.”

Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, February 9, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

People, Feeling, Country

“Because the activists usually cash out their holdings shortly after their demands are accepted or rejected, the question remains whether most of them are committed to companies’ future success. The risk is significant that their initiatives can weaken a company’s competitive position, to the detriment of long-term shareholders, and the high-leverage financing structures they often propose may put companies in jeopardy in the event of an economic downturn.”

Jay W. Lorsch (1932) American organizational theorist

Bill George and Jay W. Lorsch, " How to Outsmart Activist Investors https://hbr.org/2014/05/how-to-outsmart-activist-investors," in: Harvard Business Review, May 2014.

Question, Success, Future

“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

“How nauseating in view of all this to see Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, reduce this to a game of scrabble... to a matter of finding the right words. We now know that Fianna Fáil ministers see nothing wrong with a Minister for Finance taking large amounts of money for personal use from business interests as long as there is no proof that any specific favours were done.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/higgins-lashes-nauseating-backtrack-by-pds-71587.html

Money, Game, Business, Personality

“Upon my enquiring as to what he feared most of the future, he answered: “Destitution. Destitution of finances, destitution of mind, destitution of love. The inability to retort. The need of possessing one’s opposite in years, sex, and texture of the skin; and the knowledge that by this need one has been made repugnant. The replacing of independence by solitude.””

Kenneth Burke (1897–1993) American philosopher

Source: Towards a Better Life (1966), p. 8

Love, Fear, Sex, Knowledge

“Such a condition will likewise give opportunity to devote our surplus wealth, not to the payment of high taxes, but to the financing of the needs of other nations. Our country has already through private sources recognized the requirements in this direction and has made large advances to foreign governments and foreign enterprises for the purpose of reestablishing their public credit and their private industry.”

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

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Country, Wealth

“My mind is ever toying with economic ideas and relationships. Great novelists and poets have reported occasional abandonment by their muse. The well runs dry, permanently or on occasion. Mine has been a better luck. As I have written elsewhere, there is a vast inventory of topics and problems floating in the back of my mind. More perhaps than I shall ever have occasion to write up for publication. A result that I notice in statistical mechanics may someday help resolve a problem in finance.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

February 1985, in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
1980s–1990s

Idea, Problem, Help

“I know not whether government can command such sums of money as are necessary for the current expenses of the nation; but it is a folly to expect that this expensive department can be long supported on credit. A further attempt would only bring ruin and distress upon ourselves, without affording any substantial advantage, either to the public or the army; and, therefore, I think it highly necessary, as all military movements are under your immediate direction, and as the affairs of this department are intimately connected with all the active operations, that you should have a right understanding with Administration, with respect to the support they can give. in executing the measures you may think proper to take. There is no deficiency in the resources of the country. On the contrary, I have authentic reasons to conclude the country is more plentifully stored with every material necessary for the provision and support of an army, than it has been for three years past. The defect lies in a want of proper means to draw them into public use. I cannot see how a remedy will be applied to this evil in the present management of finance. The wretched state in which that is involved, creates obstructions, and an accumulation of expenses in every branch of the department.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (January 1780)

Money, Understanding, Support, Thinking

“Keynes disdained inside information — in fact, he once declared that Wall Street traders could make huge fortunes if only they would disregard their "inside" information — and his own oracles were nothing but his minute scrutiny of balance sheets, his encyclopedic knowledge of finance, his intuition into personalities, and a certain flair for trading.”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter IX, John Maynard Keynes, p. 248-249

Knowledge, Personality

“During late Autumn 1956, in connection with a marketing study, I forecast the imminence of a major U. S. economic recession, triggered by the over-stretching of a post-1954 credit-bubble centered in financing of automobiles, housing, and analogous consumer goods. This recession broke out in February 1957 statistics, and was generally, if reluctantly acknowledged to have occurred several months later. The recession-spiral lasted into mid-1958, and was followed by a prolonged stagnation until an upturn appeared under the Kennedy administration.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

"The Coming Disintegration of Financial Markets" (June 1994) http://spanish.larouchepac.com/static/about-larouche.html.

Autumn, Study, Appearance, Housing

“Legitimate economic expansions, financed by actual savings, do not need busts. It is only the inflation-induced varieties that sow the seeds of their own destruction.”

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

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

“I am going to give you for what it may be worth what I think are some of the qualifications a public administrator should have. I have tried to think of it in terms of personality, of training, of experience, and in none of those terms have I been able to discover what to me is a satisfactory answer. And no doubt the one thing that does satisfy my searching is susceptible of being termed as an oversimplification, but as I have looked about for administrators over a quarter of a century, I think I have discovered one thing that characterizes those that have been successful in many administrative positions of different types. It characterizes those that have been successful so far as their administrative work is concerned in the position of Presidents of the United States and Governors of states and Mayors of cities. It characterizes equally those that have been successful as the head of a finance department, the head of a unit of the health department, the head of a minor division in the police department, and the foreman of a garbage collecting gang. That is, to be a successful administrator one must have a catholic curiosity.”

Louis Brownlow (1879–1963) American mayor

Source: "What Is an Administrator?" 1936, p. 6 ; As cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 658

Health, Search, Thinking, Success

“The usual and basic Keynesian answer to recessions is a monetary expansion. But Keynes worried that even this might sometimes not be enough, particularly if a recession had been allowed to get out of hand and become a true depression. Once the economy is deeply depressed, households and especially firms may be unwilling to increase spending no matter how much cash they have, they may simply add any monetary expansion to their board. Such a situation, in which monetary policy has become ineffective, has come to be known as a "liquidity trap"; Keynes believed that the British and American economies had entered such a trap by the mid-1930s, and some economists believed that the United States was on the edge of such a tap in 1992.
The Keynesian answer to a liquidity trap is for the government to do what the private sector will not: spend. When monetary expansion is ineffective, fiscal expansion—such as public works programs financed by borrowing—must take its place. Such a fiscal expansion can break the vicious circle of low spending and low incomes, "priming the pump: and getting the economy moving again. But remember that this is not by any means an all-purpose policy recommendation; it is essentially a strategy of desperation, a dangerous drug to be prescribed only when the usual over-the-counter remedy of monetary policy has failed.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 1 : The Attack on Keynes

“Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the partition of all the territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven

World

“Analogies with the past are never properly accurate and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading, but in pure chronology I sometimes wonder if we're not in the 1920s or 1930s again… This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

[Martin Hodgson, Blair accuses Iran of fuelling 'deadly ideology' of militant Islam, http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2195043,00.html, The Guardian, 2007-10-19, 2007-10-19]
2000s

People, Peace, Past, Country

“A proper anti-swamp agenda should consist of two things. First, and most fundamentally, it should seek to reduce the size of the federal government, and cut regulations and make them as simple as possible. The more government does, the more incentive every special interest has to hire swamp creatures, for both protection and advantage. And the more complex government is, the more opportunity those creatures have to thrive in niches unknown or poorly understood by everyone except insiders. Second, and more specifically, the federal government should be wrenched out of its cozy relationship with large, established businesses and institutions in areas ranging from health care to finance to education.”

Rich Lowry (1968) American journalist

No, the Swamp Won't Be Drained (December 01, 2016)

Health, Education, Business

“When any good attitude or concept or system worked well, we hung onto it. We preserved representative democracy, intended for a time when only a few could get to the capital to speak for the many. Modern finance was designed in the 17th century. Literacy as a test of intelligence came in the 15th century. The idea of progress is 19th century. And yet, all of those things are part of our mental furniture today, because when the answer to a question -- a solution to a problem -- suits us, we kind of institutionalize it, so that it won't change even when we do. The business of questioning, itself, has been institutionalized like that, in the kind of place that Jodrell Bank telescope belongs to: a university.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are

Democracy, Intelligence, Idea, Question

“Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis. But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts… We have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market.”

Nouriel Roubini (1958) American economist

Quoted in Stephen Mihm, "Dr. Doom," http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/magazine/17pessimist-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The New York Times (2008-08-15).

People, Home, Problem

“Keynes’s design was in favour of the liberalization of the economy and the capital’s transfers, for the main purpose of monetary stability. To avoid devaluation of currencies - a practice followed by governments in order to sustain their export - Lord Keynes planned to introduce “Bancor”, a money of account to be accepted by all countries in international exchanges. The international body to be organized would get interests both from debtor and creditor countries, in order to finance the balance of payments system”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The international economy from a political to an authoritative drive, p. 130

Money, Country

“Fascist organizations were being generously financed by big business in various parts of the Country”

Tim Buck (1891–1973) Canadian politician

Tim Buck A Conscience for Canada

Business, Parting, Country

“Your Senate Committee on Finance conducted two budget hearings on this matter, Mr. President, to gain a more thorough knowledge on the various projects involved in this measure. All national government agencies and government-owned or controlled corporations that shall implement the said projects served as resource persons for the consecutive hearings.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the Supplemental Appropriations for FY 2014

Knowledge, Personality

“Massive concentration of financial power, accompanied by the machinations of finance capital, can as easily de-stabilize as stabilize capitalism.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Introduction, p. xxxii
The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition)

“Tony Blair: Has the Prime Minister secured even the minimal guarantee from the Euro-rebels that, on a future vote of confidence on Europe, they will support him?
John Major: I can sense the concern in the right hon. Gentleman's voice. Perhaps he would like to tell me whether he has received the support of the 50 MPs who defied his Front Bench over Maastricht; of the 40 who defied him over European finance; on a single currency, where the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) was in dispute with the deputy leader of the Labour party; and on clause IV, which half his, I think he called them, infantile MEPs want to keep. He does not, and his deputy leader does one day and does not the next. These are party matters. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what his position is?
Tony Blair: There is one very big difference—I lead my party, he follows his.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199495/cmhansrd/1995-04-25/Orals-2.html, House of Commons 6th series, vol. 258, cols. 655-6. Prime Minister's Question Time, 25 April 1995. 1990s

Confidence, Support, Thinking, Sense

“I think the main ingredient that’s needed when it comes to campaign finance reform is simply transparency more than anything. Right now it’s not transparent. You can be Coca Cola. You can donate a million dollars to a … you can donate a million dollars to me via the republican national committee and it will not be reported as coming from Coca Cola. So when it comes to campaign finance reform in my opinion what’s needed very simply is just one hundred percent transparency.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
Miscellaneous

Thinking

“The New Finance focused on the market's major systematic mistake. In failing to appreciate the strength of competitive forces in a market economy, it over estimates the length of the short run. In doing so, it overreacts to records of success and failure for individual companies, driving the prices of successful firms too high and their unsuccessful counterparts too low.”

Robert Haugen (1942–2013) American economist

Source: The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why (1999), Chapter 15, The Wrong 20-yard Line, p. 142

Failure, Success

“Hayek’s blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

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

People, Appearance, Time

“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.”

Merton Miller (1923–2000) 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

“That the root of love is a thirst for disaster is exhibited throughout its erratic course. At its most elementary love is driven by a longing to be cruelly unrequited; fostering every kind of repellent self-abasement, awkwardness, and idiocy. Sometimes this provokes the contempt that is so obviously appropriate, and the tormented one can then luxuriate in the utter burning loss that each gesture becomes. One wastes away; expending health and finance in orgies of narcosis, breaking down one’s labour-power to the point of destitution, pouring one’s every thought into an abyss of consuming indifference. At the end of such a trajectory lies the final breakage of health, ruinous poverty, madness, and suicide. A love that does not lead such a blasted career is always at some basic level disappointed (…)”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 11: "Inconclusive communication", p. 134 (original emphasis)

Love, Health, Disappointment, Suicide

Quotes about finance page 2

Quotes about finance
page 2