James P. Gorman Quotes

How about we all stop paying our mortgages! It's a moral hazard.

Britain is a textbook case of how growing inequality leads to economic crisis. The years before the crash were marked by a sharp rise in remortgaging and the growth of 0 percent balance transfer credit cards. By 2008 the UK had the highest ratio of household debt to GDP of any major economy.

Why are we in this mess, now facing the prospect of economic armageddon? It's because the prevailing characteristic has been greed, and it doesn't matter whether it's individuals living beyond their means or governments living beyond their means or people seeking to get rich quick.

We never did these kinds of loans that really started this mess, the subprime loans. We just never got into that business. We were enticed a lot of times to do so by a lot of Wall Street-type players, but I, frankly, never understood some of this stuff.

Home ownership was the fig leaf for the rise in subprime lending. But that was really about cash-out refinancings, not buying homes.

Why are we in this mess, now facing the prospect of economic armageddon? It's because the prevailing characteristic has been greed, and it doesn't matter whether it's individuals living beyond their means or governments living beyond their means or people seeking to get rich quick.

I was never sloppy with other people's money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be.

All of the problems we're facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It's called fantasy economics. Fantasy economics only works in a fantasy world. It doesn't work in reality.

Food Stamp recipients didn't cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.

Many of our problems are home-grown. Gordon Brown regularly advised the rest of the world to follow his British model of growth. But the model was flawed. It led to the highest level of household debt in relation to income in the world.

I lost $4 million of other people's money between the ages of 24 and 26.

We spend our way to the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.

This is the great crisis in football now. It's not just Rangers; it's a lot of clubs. Big clubs always create more debt despite the huge income they have. It's almost an achievement, isn't it? They make so much money, and yet, still, their debts rise and rise and rise. How does that happen? It's absurd.

Foreclosures are a significant problem; they're an economic problem.

I'm very interested in the more grass-roots consequences of the economic meltdown: issues related to mortgage foreclosures, debt collection, and the practices of credit card companies and others who hold a lot of consumer debt.

The financial crisis of 2008-09 was in large part the result of the so-called 'success' of people who did not understand their fiduciary duty. This kind of 'success' is extremely harmful to all of society.

I had very deep concerns about my financial status because I found that up until "Let's Dance" I was virtually broke again. I had been so irresponsible in how I dealt with my financial affairs. I take full responsibility for that.

Why don't somebody print the truth about our present economic situation? We spent six years of wild buying on credit - everything under the sun, whether we needed it or not - and now we are having to pay for 'em, and we are howling like a pet coon.

In two years, I spent all my money on cars, watches, boots, discos, restaurants, and friends who, in reality, were not friends at all. For a boy like me, who grew up in a poor neighbourhood and without money, it was dangerous.

I used to literally spend every dime I had on clothes, shoes and getting fresh.

When I bought my first house I had all these red flags on my credit report because I bounced a bunch of checks to places like Pizza Hut and stuff like that for $13 or $15 because I was trying to feed my O-linemen.

There is not an amount of money that a writer can earn that I can't blow.

I felt great empathy for the thousands of Americans who lost their home because of a system that failed them.

If I can't afford a house, or afford to keep it, I don't want to have it.

I'm from a middle class family, but my father squandered all the money, so I didn't really run around with rich people.