Quotes About Finance

If you aren't in debt, you can't go broke and can't be made to sell, in which case "liquidity" is irrelevant. But a leveraged firm may be forced to sell, lest fast-accumulating losses put it out of business. Leverage always gives rise to this same brutal dynamic, and its dangers cannot be stressed too often.

Warburg was shocked by the primitiveness of American finance. Whereas banks in Germany functioned with near-military cohesiveness, banking in America, he concluded, suffered from an ethos of extreme individualism.

As Keynes observed, there cannot be "liquidity" for the community as a whole.6 The mistake is in thinking that markets have a duty to stay liquid or that buyers will always be present to accommodate sellers.

If you aren't in debt, you can't go broke and can't be made to sell, in which case "liquidity" is irrelevant.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. —JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

antisabbatical"—a job approached "with the sole intention of staying for a limited period of time (often one year)…to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity.

he warned that progressive accumulation of debt "is perhaps the NATURAL DISEASE of all Governments. And it is not easy to conceive anything more likely than this to lead to great and convulsive revolutions of Empire.

The financial turmoil on Wall Street and the William Duer debacle pointed up a glaring defect in Hamilton's political theory: the rich could put their own interests above the national interest.

Months after leaving office, he wrote to the Bank of the United States and admitted that he did not know his account balance because he had lost his bank book—this from the man who had created the bank.

and they pooled their money to set up the new bank.

Already so flush that he had invested in his first railroad stock, with cash to spare for the firm, Rockefeller was far more receptive.

about a billion dollars in tax-free income per annum in today's money.

To maximize its leverage over Wall Street, it scattered its gigantic balances among many banks;

Standard Oil of New York also made large loans to banks, brokerage houses, railroads, and steel companies.

The next day, Cortelyou put $25 million in government funds at Pierpont's disposal

Had she stayed in business, she would have been bankrupt within a few years.

To bail out these borrowers, Rockefeller had to borrow almost $4 million, and nearly $3 million of that came from Standard of New York.

all looking up at the windows of J. P. Morgan & Co.

Instead of making isolated gifts, Rockefeller wanted to finance institutions whose research would have a pervasive influence.

I don't see any harm myself in making a little money, provided that it can be done honestly and reasonably.

Like the London merchant bankers, the early Jewish bankers on Wall Street had started out as dry-goods merchants: the Lehmans began as Alabama cotton brokers; Goldman, as the owner of a Pennsylvania clothing store, Kuhn and Loeb, as Cincinnati clothiers; and Lazard, in a New Orleans dry-goods business.

Pierpont was amenable to central banks so long as they were private and had boards composed of bankers.

Goldman, Sachs specialized in commercial paper, Lehman in commodity trading.

The certificate of deposit was more difficult to trace than a check and was the instrument of choice for political bribery.