Credit is a system whereby a person who cannot pay
gets another person who cannot pay to guarantee that he can pay.
Charles Dickens
Have some negatively influenced economic performance and consumer behavior
through legislation, budget appropriation, regulation and taxation
to benefit a few at the expense of many?
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand
that its effects will be beneficial
that its effects will be beneficial
is not freedom.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Are some who reaped exorbitant Wall Street bonuses
when mark to market accounting created gains
among those who lobbied for the accounting method to be suspended
as valuations retarded compensation?
The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen]
ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted,
till after having been long and carefully examined
not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.
It comes from an order of men
whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public,
who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public,
and who accordingly have, upon many occasions both deceived and oppressed it.
Adam Smith
Moral philosopher and Father of Modern Economics
Should shareholder and debt investors reap profits
from money borrowed from a nation’s children,
to enrich companies responsible for destroying the middle class?
Did some stabilize financial markets in the short term
to defend legacies and financial interests, regardless of long term consequences?
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable
...Our government teaches the whole people by its example.
If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Louis Brandeis
Can greed and/or fear lead some to believe some things
are less or more risky than they actually are?
