Quotes About Finance

making provision for an uncertain future has taken the very simple form of an investment (usually leveraged, that is debt-financed) in a house

the way the money was spent ensured that Spain's newfound wealth provided the entire continent with a monetary stimulus.

La administración británica de las finanzas egipcias tuvo mucho en común con una misión del Fondo Monetario Internacional, o más bien con el modo en que una misión del FMI operaría si pudiera llamar a la Royal Navy para hacer cumplir sus prescripciones. Evelyn

The more integrated the world's financial markets become, the greater the opportunities for financially knowledgeable people wherever they live - and the bigger the risk of downward mobility for the financially illiterate.

Debts were transferable, hence 'pay the bearer' rather than a named creditor.

the financial system is so genuinely complex and so many of the relationships within it are non-linear, even chaotic.

public expectations of inflation to shift and the demand for cash balances to fall

But the foundation on which all of this rested was the underlying credibility of a borrower's promise to repay. (It is no coincidence that in English the root of 'credit' is credo, the Latin for 'I believe

In real terms, stocks increased by a factor of 10.3; bonds by a factor of 3.4; bills by a factor of 1.8. Had my parents made the mistake of simply buying $10,000 in dollar bills in 1964, the real value of their son's nest egg would have declined in real terms by 85 per cent.

The best way to rob a bank is to own one.

Niall Ferguson

Suddenly the people running Savings and Loans had nothing to lose - a clear case of what economists call moral hazard.

the joint-stock, limited-liability corporation: joint-stock because the company's capital was jointly owned by multiple investors; limited-liability because the separate existence of the company as a legal 'person' protected the investors from losing all their wealth if the venture failed.

Only by historical methods can we explain why, over the past thirty years, so many countries created forms of debt that, by design, cannot be inflated away; and why, as a result, the next generation will be saddled for life with liabilities incurred by their parents and grandparents.

Soros regards himself as more a philosopher than a hit man. His book The Alchemy of Finance (1987) begins with a bold critique of the fundamental assumptions of economics as a subject

every one per cent increase in the Bank of England's base lending rate correlated with a three per cent drop in government popularity.

They achieved this by learning a crucial lesson: in finance small is seldom beautiful. By making their bank bigger and more diversified than any previous financial institution, they found a way of spreading their risks. And by engaging in currency trading as well as lending, they reduced their vulnerability to defaults.

Inflation', wrote Milton Friedman in a famous definition, 'is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.' What

The Amsterdam Exchange Bank (Wisselbank) was set up in 1609 to resolve the practical problems created for merchants by the circulation of multiple currencies in the United Provinces, where there were no fewer than fourteen different mints and copious quantities of foreign coins.

By allowing merchants to set up accounts denominated in a standardized currency, the Exchange Bank pioneered the system of cheques and direct debits or transfers that we take for granted today. This allowed more and more commercial transactions to take place without the need for the sums involved to materialize in actual coins.

Inflation', wrote Milton Friedman in a famous definition, 'is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.

From the summer of 1719 investors who wished to acquire the 'daughters' and 'granddaughters' were generously assisted by the Banque Royale, which allowed shareholders to borrow money, using their shares as collateral; money they could then invest in more shares.

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the where-withal: call it what you like, money matters.

most money is invisible, little more than numbers on a computer screen?