Stephen Colbert Quotes

Because I wrote a book about Goldman Sachs. And I know that, from talking to people at Goldman Sachs, that Trump is the poster child for the kind of client they don't want to do business with, mainly because he would borrow all this money from Wall Street to build his casinos, and then didn't pay it back.

Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest.

For too long, Americans have fallen victim to financial abuses at the hands of predatory lenders that operate in the shadows.

Trailer home borrowers, mostly near the bottom of the economic ladder, often default on their loans.

It’s going to put people into indentured servitude to the credit card companies.

The most troubling loan we had was actually to the 'Octomom'. That was a terrible situation, and we worked very, very hard to move her to another home that they could afford.

Too often, borrowers who need quick cash end up trapped in loans they can't afford.

What you want to watch are the lenders, not the borrowers. The borrowers will always be willing to take a great deal for themselves. It's up to the lenders to show restraint, and when they lose it, watch out.

Profiting from student loans is usury, and we just can't continue to allow it.

I was absolutely astonished and could not believe my eyes at the outrageous interest rates that people in need have to pay to get loans.

The bankers might not have said it in so many words, but gradually their strategy emerged: Target families who were already in a little trouble, lend them more money, get them entangled in high fees and astronomical interest rates, and then block the doors to the bankruptcy exit if they really got in over their heads.

Irrational lenders come and go - mostly they go!

Some people, they got housing loans, and I think they're responsible for taking a loan they didn't qualify for?

The mortgage crisis is a clear instance of consumers who needed protection. There was predatory lending to people who didn't know what they were doing.

We don't want to give a business that is not going to come through the troubled waters a loan that they can't pay back.

A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.

The build-up of personal and collective debt in America and Europe should have sent warning signals to anyone familiar with the biblical institutions of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, created specifically because of the danger of people being trapped by debt.

Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.

The Pentagon got fed up with its recruits getting ripped off by payday lenders and in 2007 got Congress to make it illegal to extend such loans to members of the military. But civilians remain fair game.

Making loans accessible to millions of the previously unbankable customers is a noble goal. Getting them hooked to such loans isn't.

What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them.

We developed microfinance to fight loan sharks - I was telling people don't go to loan sharks - not trying to take advantage and make money for myself. I would be a junior loan shark if I did... It is not a panacea.

Usury once in control will wreck the nation.

Can't make your payments? No problem. The interest charges keep on coming. In fact, banks prefer it that way. More money for them. The government guarantees it.

People get into debt head over heels because banks make it so easy to do so. Then the banks come along and act like these people who can't or won't pay their bills are the dregs of society.