Quotes About Excessive borrowing

The present situation is perverse. It is as if we were to subsidize the chemical industry to intentionally pollute rivers and lakes. Such subsidies would encourage additional pollution. If the industry were asked to limit the pollution, it would complain that its costs would increase. Would such complaints make us tolerate the pollution? Subsidizing banks to borrow excessively is just like subsidizing and encouraging companies to pollute when they have clean alternatives.

We spend too much, we borrow too much, and we distort the markets. The bigger the distortions have lasted, the bigger the bust will be.

were a lot of bad actors). Let's start at the bottom: too many people borrowed too much money to buy real estate.

there is one common theme to the vast range of crises we consider in this book, it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom.

Why don't we pass a law that says when you borrow money to buy somebody else and cannibalize him, the interest payments on those loans are not deductible? That would get the excesses out of the system pretty fast. Right now, if you want to buy up a competitor, generally you can't. That would violate the antitrust laws. But if you want to buy a company that does something else entirely, that's okay. Where's the sense in that?