Quotes About Finance

Lending to firms and individuals engaged in the production of goods and services – which most people would imagine was the principal business of a bank – amounts to about 3 per cent of that total (see Chapter 6

Although much of what is written about finance would give a different impression, you are not providing funds for business investment by holding a company's shares, directly or indirectly. As I have explained, companies large enough to be quoted on a stock exchange are, overwhelmingly, self-financing. The relationship between the long-term investor and Exxon Mobil is one of stewardship.

Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.

The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled.

mortgage The word literally means "dead pledge," and if it were called that maybe more people would think twice about getting one. It is a classic example of a financial entity that would scare people off if they thought more clearly about what it is: a highly leveraged form of long-term borrowing with regular demands for cash payment against an illiquid asset that is known to be even more illiquid in difficult times.

Customers deposit money in a bank for interest; the bank lends that money to other people at a higher rate of interest. This isn't glamorous or interesting, but then banking is not supposed to resemble base jumping or hip-hop.

the words lex monetae are really just a polite Latin way of saying, "Suck it, creditors.

Most hedge funds fail: 90 percent of all the hedge funds that have ever existed have closed or gone broke.

Frankfurt's big problem is that London is a much more attractive and interesting place to live, especially for the demographic who work in finance: as a former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, put it, "Young men want to go out on the pull and do a lot of cocaine, and they can't really do that easily in Frankfurt.

The rich are different from you and me because they have more credit.

Tis in vain therefore to go about effectually to reduce the price of Interest by a Law; and you may as rationally hope to set a fixt Rate upon the Hire of Houses, or Ships, as of Money.

If you look at things that really affect people's lives - sport, the arts, charities - they were always at the back of the queue for government money - health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas - sports, the arts, the lottery - got relatively petty cash from the government.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy

The Bible speaks negatively of all debt.

If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

Of the maxims of orthodox finance, none, surely, is more antisocial than the fetish of liquidity…. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.