“Because of the financial crash, we've lost trust in these big businesses that were led by a linear ambition to reach the top by risk - and invariably led by men. And so I think all the stuff that was seen as great "behaviour" will not be in the future, which I'm really pleased about.” ThinkingMenBigsLostStuffRiskAmbitionFinancialCrashBehaviourLinearBig BusinessLost Trust Author:Mary Portas
“Having done a normal job for 10 years, as a psychiatric nurse dealing with emergencies, I know what terrible, hopeless lives some people have. So in many ways, it's great to be able to wield the financial power that I can, and do gigs, fundraisers or give money. I feel lucky I can help out.” PeopleKnowsWayGivingFeelsYearsI CanDoneHelpingAbleJobsTerribleLuckyNormalFinancialHopelessNurseEmergenciesGigsPsychiatricFundraiser Author:Jo Brand
“War to me is very much like sex. You can develop a theory that says sex is primarily for the exchange of genetic material, or that it's a celebration of life, or you can make up 50,000 theories about why human beings have sex, all of which are in some sense true, all of which by themselves miss the point. Because the answer is extraordinarily complex. It may be for fun, it may be for reproduction, for financial reasons, any number of things.” HumansMayWarReasonFunSexHuman BeingsAnswersNumbersMissingMaterialsTheoryComplexesFinancialCelebrationReproductionCelebration Of Life Author:George Friedman
“The Fed has a lot of power in the economy because it has a big impact on the supply and cost of credit, that is, interest rates. It also plays a key role in supervising banks and historically has seemed to take it easy on the banks when it shouldn't have, such as in the lead up to the financial crisis.” PlayBigsEasyInterestRolesEconomyKeysCostCrisisImpactRateFinancialCreditFedsInterest RateFinancial CrisisTake It EasyBig Impact Author:Gerald Epstein
“Bankers themselves govern the Fed to some extent, and then there's the classic revolving door where Fed officials come from and then go back to the financial sector. Fed officials tend to believe that the institution should have a large measure of independence from democratic control, even though in law it is under the ostensible control of Congress.” ShouldBelieveLawDoorsShould HaveIndependenceInstitutionsDemocraticFinancialCongressClassicOfficialsFedsBankersIn-lawsRevolvingRevolving Doors Author:Gerald Epstein
“Critics, often for good reason, are concerned that the Fed is wielding its vast powers in the interests of the banks and not in the interests of the people. After the financial crisis, Americans have perceived that the banks have been bailed out, but a significant proportion of the population is still in serious economic trouble.” PeopleHas BeensStillsReasonInterestTroubleEconomicSeriousConcernedCrisisCriticsFinancialPopulationSignificantProportionFedsFinancial Crisis Author:Gerald Epstein
“The Fed needs to adopt new tools, on its own and perhaps in cooperation with the other parts of the US government, to improve the economy from the bottom up. This includes increasing facilities for debt forgiveness for under-water mortgages and excessive student loans; increased credit facilities for small businesses and cooperatives; helping to underwrite mechanisms for creating affordable housing in cities; and more restrictive enforcement of financial regulatory rules to help rein in excessive banker risk and pay.” NeedsHelpingGovernmentWaterPayCitiesEconomyRiskStudentsCreatingToolsBottomFinancialCreditDebtFedsCooperationMechanismEnforcementSmall BusinessHousingLoanFacilityBankersMortgageAffordableReinsCooperativesStudent LoanAffordable Housing Author:Gerald Epstein
“It's just very hard to teach a class of students about what has happened in the Global Financial Crisis, how we ended up there and how we got to where we are today, without having some basic, non-trivial understanding of the financial sector, credit, and the banking system.” HardTodayUnderstandingClassTeachHappenedStudentsCrisisFinancialCreditBankingFinancial CrisisBanking System Author:Alan M. Taylor
“In the immediate postwar era, financial crises in advanced countries were rare events, and before 1970 did not happen at all. Since then they have occurred more often, and 2008 was the most damaging of them all to date. If we have moved back to a regime of regular financial crises - like the one we had from the 1870s to the 1930s - then our economic future will be very different from our recent past.” IfsDifferentCountryHappensPastEconomicEventsCrisisMovedFinancialErasRegimes1930sFinancial CrisisRecent PastRare Events Author:Alan M. Taylor
“Macroeconomic stability will be more elusive and that will affect all of our lives: from the risks many will face in childhood, to the security of employment at working age, to the challenge of accumulating for retirement. More financial instability will introduce more uncertainty all down the line, and that will be a very different world than the one we would have lived in only a couple of decades ago.” WorldDifferentAgeFacesChallengesLinesOur LivesRiskChildhoodSecurityCoupleFinancialDecadesEmploymentUncertaintyRetirementStabilityIntroducingElusiveDifferent WorldsInstabilityMacroeconomics Author:Alan M. Taylor
“A possibility is that we see more and more leverage, and credit-to-GDP ratios rise once more to even higher levels; eventually the banking systems of all advanced economies reach magnitudes of 500 percent, 1000 percent or more of GDP, so that every economy starts to have financial systems that resemble recent cases like Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, or Cyprus. That might be a very fragile world to live in.” WorldMightLevelsCasesEconomyPossibilityHigherPercentFinancialCreditFragileIrelandBankingMagnitudeHigher LevelRatiosSwitzerlandGdpBanking SystemFinancial SystemIcelandCyprus Author:Alan M. Taylor
“The global financial crisis is a great opportunity to showcase and propagate both causal and moral institutional analysis. The crisis shows major flaws in the way the US financial system is regulated and, more importantly, in our political system, which is essentially a bazaar of legalized bribery where financial institutions can buy themselves the governmental regulations they want, along with the regulators who routinely receive lucrative jobs in the industry whose oversight had formerly been their responsibility, the so-called revolving-door practice.” WayWantShowsJobsPoliticalOpportunityResponsibilityMoralPracticeDoorsIndustryMajorsCrisisInstitutionsFinancialAnalysisFlawsRegulationPolitical SystemsGreat OpportunityFinancial CrisisOversightBriberyRevolvingRegulatorsFinancial SystemShowcaseFinancial InstitutionsRevolving DoorsBazaars Author:Thomas Pogge
“The European Union is effectively a union dominated by the German political and economic elite. Its main function is to serve as a nucleus for financial capitalism and to ease the road for that capitalism. The other functions just irritate everyone: it's undemocratic; decisions are not made by parliament; the European Parliament is not sovereign.” MadePoliticalDecisionEconomicCapitalismFunctionUnionsFinancialEaseElitesSovereignParliamentEuropean UnionNucleus Author:Tariq Ali
“In Cuba, we have a democracy that represents the humble, the dispossessed, those who make up the vast majority of the population. It is for those who carry the main weight of society's load in matters of the production of goods and services. These are not the ones that live from financial speculation.” MatterDemocracyWeightMajorityFinancialPopulationProductionsHumbleGoodsLoadSpeculationCubaGoods And Services Author:Alejandro Castro Espin
“The great financial capital is not in one country, it is transnational, that is why it answers to power elites and that is why when I talk about the imperial power of United States I am in no way referring to the American people, who are a noble people that have always been moved by humane concerns.” PeopleWayCountryStatesAnswersUnitedUnited StatesConcernMovedFinancialNobleElitesHumaneReferringGreat Financial Author:Alejandro Castro Espin
“I often repeat three numbers: 20-23-26. Quebec generates only 20 per cent of Canada's wealth; it represents 23 per cent of the population, but it does 26 per cent of government spending in Canada. That's incompatible with good financial health over the long term.” LongDoeGovernmentThreeTermWealthNumbersFinancialPopulationSpendingLong TermRepeatsCanadaCentsGovernment SpendingQuebec Author:Philippe Couillard
“I belong to a generation that had so many choices available. In 1970, when [former premier Robert] Bourassa launched the James Bay development project, nobody in Quebec asked whether we had the means to do it. Today could we launch another James Bay? Imagine the debates we'd have? We were a young, rich society with almost no debt. The generation that comes after us, and which will lead Quebec, must also have choices. And for that, they'll need financial manoeuvring room.” NeedsMeanTodayYoungChoicesRoomsRichImagineGenerationsDevelopmentProjectsFinancialAvailableDebtDebateFormerQuebec Author:Philippe Couillard
“Quebec's financial situation is serious. In terms of intensity, we're close to matching 1982 and 1997. We won't do the same things this time, but the problems we face today are about as pressing.” ProblemTodayFacesTermSituationSeriousFinancialIntensityMatchingQuebec Author:Philippe Couillard
“The President [Barack Obama], I think if you look at it from his shoes, you know, was facing a very difficult situation where he had to own Washington, tame New York, save a collapsing economy, with a collapsed financial system. He moved, I think, to a team that he felt was tried and true, in terms of dealing with financial crisis. That was his decision.” IfsThinkingKnowsLooksFeltDifficultPresidentTermDecisionSituationEconomyTeamNew YorkCrisisMovedShoesFinancialBarackPresident Barack ObamaFinancial CrisisDifficult SituationsFinancial System Author:Ron Suskind
“I very much support financial education in schools.” SchoolSupportFinancialFinancial Education Author:George Osborne
“I would also like to see children aged between 11 and 18 taught financial education in a structured way in schools. I would also say that that is not enough. You have also got to improve numeracy skills, mathematical skills in schools.” WayChildrenEnoughSchoolTaughtSkillsFinancialMathematicalFinancial EducationNumeracy Author:George Osborne
“Britain wants the single currency to be a success. It is massively in our interests that we have a stable financial system on our doorstep.” WantInterestFinancialBritainStableCurrencyDoorstepFinancial System Author:George Osborne
“I've said to [Donald Trump], and I think others have said to him that the day that he is the President of the United States, there are world capitals and financial markets and people all around the world who take really seriously what he says, and in a way that's just not true before you're actually sworn in as president.” PeopleThinkingWorldWaySaidStatesPresidentUnitedUnited StatesTrumpFinancialAround The WorldFinancial Markets Author:Barack Obama
“If you look at what happened, I came in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And unlike Franklin Delano Roosevelt who waited, well, didn't take office until about three years into the Great Depression, it was happening just as I was elected.” IfsYearsWellsLooksThreeHappenedMiddleWorstOfficeHappeningsCrisisFinancialThree YearsFranklinGreat DepressionFinancial CrisisFranklin Delano Roosevelt Author:Barack Obama
“The pope [Francis] takes his vocabulary from his pastoral experience, not from the rhetorical tool kit of liberation theology, with its Marxist yammering about "center" and "periphery." The "peripheries," for Francis, are all those who have fallen through the cracks of late-modernity and post-modernity - in his native Argentina, because of colossal corruption, political and financial.” PoliticalLateToolsFinancialCorruptionTheologyPostsLiberationFallenNativeCracksPopeVocabularyModernityMarxistArgentinaColossalRhetoricalPeriphery Author:George Weigel
“The most important appointment Pope Francis has made is the appointment of the Australian cardinal, George Pell, as the Vatican's financial overseer.” MadeImportantFinancialPopeAustralianAppointmentsCardinals Author:George Weigel
“Quite apart from the Church's financial self-interest in getting me out of the way, Baltimore is an overwhelmingly Catholic city and like most good Christians, they felt we ought to be punished for our unorthodox views.” WaySelfChristianFeltInterestChurchViewsCitiesOughtCatholicFinancialSelf InterestBaltimoreGood ChristianUnorthodox Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
“When I was on tour, people would say "We don't need a value-based currency, we can go out and buy gold and silver with US dollars now." I mean that it is so utterly brain dead, because they miss the whole point: the reason we need to have a gold and silver based currency is to bring discipline to the financial system so the government can't go out and do all sorts of bad things.” PeopleNeedsMeanReasonWholeGovernmentValuesBrainMissingDisciplineGoldDollarsFinancialSilverBad ThingsCurrencyGold And SilverFinancial SystemBrain Dead Author:Bernard von NotHaus
“I never collected cars as a financial thing; I wanted to go racing, so I chose the cars I wanted to go racing with. Like the Ferrari 250 GTO. I bought it because it absolutely fulfilled everything I wanted from a car.” WantedCarFinancialRacingFulfilledFerrari Author:Nick Mason
“It's part of developing the whole state of how cinema is; everyone is looking out and engaged rather than it being just a financial thing or sitting back, waiting for scripts to turn up.” StatesWholeTurnsWaitingSittingFinancialScriptsDevelopingCinemaEngaged Author:Ben Wheatley
“I often think that the reason capitalism hasn't completely destroyed everything is that a huge amount of anti-capitalist endeavor goes on, from labors of love, nurture, friendship, and barter to gift economies and different kinds of exchanges, not just one alternate model but a whole host of other ways in which we engage with each other and with the world that aren't financial and debt-based.” ThinkingWorldWayKindDifferentReasonWholeEconomyHugeGoes OnAmountModelsCapitalismLaborFinancialDebtDestroyedJust OneEndeavorHostCapitalistDifferent KindsNurtureLabor Of Love Author:Rebecca Solnit
“The oil corporations spend a lot of money to get, say, the tar sands pipeline through, but nobody's - you know, there are definitely environmentalists being paid - but a lot of people are acting for something other than financial compensation. So if the tar sands pipeline doesn't get made, it's because a huge amount of people are doing something that doesn't involve remuneration, money, etc., because we're not actually the self-interested financial instruments that economists like to imagine we are.” PeopleIfsKnowsMadeSelfActingImagineHugeAmountPaidInstrumentsFinancialOilMade ItCorporationsSandEtcLots Of MoneyEconomistCompensationEnvironmentalistPipelineRemuneration Author:Rebecca Solnit
“We don't invest in financial literacy in a meaningful way. We should be teaching elementary school children how to balance a checkbook, how to do basic accounting, why it's important to pay your bills on time. First, education. Begin the learning process as early as possible, in elementary school. Second, encourage and support entrepreneurism. Third, policy. I know it's a priority of the US Treasury to augment financial inclusion and increase financial literacy.” KnowsWayShouldFirstsChildrenImportantSchoolProcessPaySupportTeachingPolicyBalanceThirdsIncreaseBillsFinancialPrioritiesMeaningfulInclusionLiteracyAccountingLearning ProcessTreasuryElementary SchoolFinancial LiteracyUs Treasury Author:Kabir Sehgal
“For the last several decades, there was a prevailing belief among traditional economists that the markets were rational and self-correcting. Alan Greenspan advocated this view. But the 2008 financial crisis showed that this view is incorrect, and Greenspan eventually admitted as much.” SelfLastsBeliefViewsCrisisFinancialDecadesRationalTraditionalEconomistPrevailingCorrectingFinancial Crisis Author:Kabir Sehgal
“All decisions originate in the brain. So if we can better understand what's happening in the brain when we make investment decisions, maybe one day we'll be able to make more accurate financial forecasts - for a stock or even the entire market.” IfsAbleDecisionBrainOne DayHappeningsInvestmentFinancialAccurateForecastsMaybe One Day Author:Kabir Sehgal
“We have many dreams and many different chapters in life and I think life is about chapters. For me, from the time I was pretty young, I always thought that if I was lucky enough to achieve my dreams and if I had financial security, at a certain point in my life I wanted to give back. I wanted, just corny as it sounds, to try and make the world a better place.” IfsThinkingWorldGivingTryingDifferentEnoughDreamWantedYoungLife IsCertainSoundAchieveSecurityLuckyFinancialChaptersBetter PlaceGiving BackCornyFinancial Security Author:Sherry Lansing
“The arts are a green industry with a very high rate of return. This is not money thrown away by any stretch of the imagination. This is money that creates jobs. This is money that brings life, financial life, to communities.” ArtCommunityImaginationRateFinancial Author:Robert Schenkkan
“That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems. The contrasts between the haves and have-nots is so complicated. It's financial of course, but it's also the lifestyle choices. The more money people have the further away from each other they often want to be. So while I loved not being hungry and having new gear, etc. I missed the sounds of my neighbors and the kind of generosity people who are struggling together often show.” PeopleWritingKindTogetherChoicesStruggleFinancialComplicatedNeighborLifestyleHungryGenerosityContrast Author:Adrian Matejka
“A stand in is a politician who can deliver her constituency to her Wall Street backers. That's what a politician does in America. You get a constituency; you make them believe your promises, and then you turn them over to your financial campaign backers. That's what politics has become and that's as much an art of deception as economics is.” BelieveArtWallPoliticianPromiseFinancialDeception Author:Michael Hudson
“Elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called "unproductive activity."” TodayInterestSupportTaxesFinancialEconomistLandlordFeudalism Author:Michael Hudson
“The financial time frame always has been short-term. Projects with long-term paybacks are cut back, because CEOs and financial managers simply want to take their money and run. That is the financial mentality.” RunningCuttingFinancialMentalityCeo Author:Michael Hudson
“The ideological foundation of today's business schools is that economic control should be shifted out of government hands into those of financial managers - that is, Wall Street.” SchoolEconomicWallFinancialIdeological Author:Michael Hudson
“The problem is indeed that one party's debt finds its counterpart in some other party's savings. Not paying debts therefore involves annulling some other party's financial claims on the debtor.” ProblemFinancial Author:Michael Hudson
“The story in America was a vibrant, bottoms-up democracy subverted by corporations and financial speculators. Those people now control much of the narrative. They also control the congressmen and the legislation that's passed in Washington. So we felt that America had become a corporate state and soft regime change was necessary. That was the concept that got us excited. Then we started thinking about ways to spark it.” PeopleThinkingDemocracyFinancialExcited Author:Kalle Lasn
“People look at the future and see a black hole. They look at climate change and see an ecological crisis. They look at their leaders corrupted by money and see a political crisis. They wonder if they'll ever be able to pay off their student loan or own a house. Given this ecological, political and financial crisis, what they want is a different future. Their fundamental demand is a different regime to provide that future.” PeopleDifferentPoliticalHouseBlackLeaderWonderStudentsCrisisClimate ChangeFinancialLoanEcologicalFinancial CrisisBlack HoleStudent Loan Author:Kalle Lasn
“The October Crisis was not just a crisis of the financial sector, but one arising from an ill-informed and erroneous mindset that still infects businesses in general and requires correction.” CrisisFinancialMindsetOctober Author:Chip Pitts
“The problem is if you play enough of parts in films that are sort of more financial products than anything or films in which the girl is a thankless, thoughtless, underwritten character along the way, you're no longer the person who had something fresh or vital to offer. I think it really does start to diminish some part of you, to put yourself through things you don't really want to be doing.” ThinkingEnoughCharacterProblemFilmGirlFinancial Author:Brit Marling
“I think the most relative thing is that women in a way that I think people haven't given us credit for, want to return to this idea about equality in marriages and financial autonomy. And if the richest women don't have financial autonomy, what does it mean for the rest of us? That's all.” PeopleThinkingMeanFinancialRelativeAutonomy Author:Wednesday Martin
“Let Girls Learn issue has always been personal for me. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn't have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work - and a lot of financial aid - I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.” SchoolGirlParentChanceCollegeHard WorkAmbitionFinancialAidsNeighborhoodMy AmbitionLaw SchoolCollege Degree Author:Michelle Obama
“Take a look at the current debates in Washington, and of course, everything in the media. Only one issue is discussed: the deficit - the least significant issue, but the most significant issue for the banks. The big problem, joblessness, is barely discussed, even though that's what the public wants, as polls clearly show. That's even what the business press supports, but the financial institutions are so powerful that the only issue is the deficit, and this runs right through the intellectual culture.” ProblemRunningCulturePowerfulSupportIntellectualFinancialDebateSignificant Author:Noam Chomsky