Financial Crisis Quotes
He did indeed kill the Bank of the United States by exercising the Presidential Veto on the legislation renewing the Bank’s government charter. The Bank was privately owned but handled all the fiscal functions for the Government and holding the United States deposits. The Bank owners and executives were not supports of Jackson and opposed him on many issues. Jackson thought it outrageous that a private bank, not under the control of the people or the representatives of the people, should have a monopoly on the banking functions of the United States. Vetoes were very unusual then. All the presidents before Jackson together vetoed only 12 laws. Jackson himself vetoed 13 including the Bank of America.
Essentially Mellon told the President to let the entire economy crash. With huge numbers of people out of work, labor would be more humble and not only settle for lower wages, but will work harder, and without "excess" income beyond their basic needs, they would not drink and engage in other immoral activities. President Hoover, a wealthy man himself, did not go along with Mellon's idea of making the situation worse, but his conservative philosophy of government would not allow the Government to "interfere" with the private economy or give any direct assistance to the citizens.
Many companies appear to be doing much better than they really are. Often they employ PR professionals to create that impression. Some companies are not even solvent, but the only way we can all tell is to have a recession generally or in that particular sector—the equivalent of the tide going out.
Credit default swaps were in large part responsible for the melt down of the economy of 2008 and the Great Recession thereafter. A credit default swap was one of the favorite derivatives that became popular. Is an insurance policy that a company will pay off its bonds and not go bankrupt. It is a cross between an insurance mechanism and a stock exchange type security mechanism, and through heavy lobbying, escaped any kind of regulation. It cost a company no money to write a credit default swap, and they were paid to do so. As long as business and the economy was good, it was a terrific business but there was no way of ever knowing how much risk they were taking. So companies who wrote credit default swaps did not have to have the money to pay to back them up. When that happened in 2008, even the largest insurance company in the world collapsed because of the risk of having to pay the credit default swap and the U. S. Government had to take over the insurance company. In 2010, the Obama administration passed a financial reform bill that began to regulate credit default swaps. Buffet, the American who had made the most money in financial securities, realized the great danger not only to the company, but to the entire national economy. Most of the rest of the financial institutions, could make large amounts of money without have to have much capital as long as things went well. So credit default swaps began to exceed the other financial instruments in activity. Neither the Federal Reserve or the other government regulatory agencies chose to regulate these risky instruments nor even to require that they be publicly disclosed -- See {637987}, {637986} and {637992}.
Statement made in response to Jimmy Carter's technical arguments about the economy at a Teamsters convention in Ohio.
The American Revolution was a trying time, not only militarily but in just about every other way as well. Washington was quite pessimistic in 1778 as this quotation demonstrates. But it was to get worse. See {624230}. And the rapacity even extended to war profiteering. {624227}.
AIG was America’s largest insurance company. It failed and the Federal Government in a massive bailout took over the company.
