John Podhoretz Quotes

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.

When I was young, people lived from paycheck to paycheck. Today, it seems like they live from credit card payment to credit card payment.

The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules.

A cash advance on a credit card is one of the worst types of borrowing because the interest rate is typically 21 percent or more.

Families rely on financial services more than ever, but those who need them most - who struggle to make ends meet - too often must contend with sky-high interest rates and tricks and traps buried in the fine print of their loan products.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

I just really think every job I do, I get this gypsy attitude to money.

You want 21 percent risk free? Pay off your credit cards.

I'm always worried about my money for some reason.

I had a couple come in with a negative amortization mortgage on a house that costs way too much relative to their income. They're consuming real estate, not investing in it.

When you get money you're always a target because there's always somebody who needs money out there.

The unique danger today is the possibility that we may face longer-term stagnation as a consequence of relying too heavily on borrowed money.

You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, 'Don't go in that door!' because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends.

The way I look at it, everything is a trade. You acquire some money, so then you've got no financial burdens, but everyone wants your money and so who can you trust? Or you've got no money and you can trust anyone, but then you've got the worry to pay bills. Which is worse?

Credit card interest payments are the dumbest money of all.

What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives.

Growth based on debt is unsustainable, artificial.

At the heart of banking is a suicidal strategy. Banks take money from the public or each other on call, skim it for their own reward and then lock the rest up in volatile, insecure and illiquid loans that at times they cannot redeem without public aid.

One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can't pay back.

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

A broke nation is a weak nation.

Whoever gambles with the dollar, loses

Debt has become a part of who we are… Normal is broke in America.

There was a time (not so long ago historically) when people were put in jail for owing money. Now we not only don’t punish them, but we make it easier and easier for them to slide out of their old debts, and start getting into new ones.