Over a period of 500 years the City has supported deregulation at every turn. The consequences of this are massive. You had fraudulent products – the cause of the crash – debt being repackaged as an asset and then being used as leverage. The assets they held and credit they generated were on a ratio of 50-1. There was no effective regulation of this, no effective oversight. They have been exposed by the bailout. They have refused more than ten years of requests from us [London Citizens UK organisation] and suddenly they agree to meet. I think they are concerned that the political parties will move to a more manufacturing, less financially-based economy.
Maurice Glasman, Baron GlasmanRelated topics
assets cause city crash credit debt hold less leverage manufacturing meet move oversight ratio regulation ten turn 500 organisation years deregulation bailoutRelated quotes
You can say for me that I will not play with the Red Sox unless I get $20,000. You may think that sounds like a pipe dream, but it is the truth. I feel that I made a bad move last year when I signed a three years' contract to play for $30,000. The Boston club realized much on my value and I think I am entitled to twice as much as my contract calls for. The contract has two years to run, I know. It may be ironbound as far as the Boston club is concerned, but I think with the 10-day clause in it I am entitled to the same privileges as the club. Well, that is a matter for the owners to right, and as my business is in another direction just at present I am going to wait to hear from them.
Babe Ruth
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.
Barack Obama
Society is much more than a collection of individuals acting together, even through the complex and subtle mechanisms of the free economy, for material advantage. It has an existence of its own; it thinks and feels; it looks inwards, as a community to its own members; it looks outwards as a nation, into a world populated by other societies, like or unlike itself. The Tory Party, with its deep sense of history, has always concerned itself especially with these two aspects of society, and I believe that the British people would instinctively and rightly reject a philosophy which offered them just an economic machine, however efficient and successful.
Enoch Powell
The most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it. This means, I would judge, that we must come to terms with it. I sincerely believe that if we cannot do so we may imperil the precarious balance between East and West on which the peace of the world depends.
Harold Macmillan
Because the book became a freak 'bestseller', because I found myself bracketed with the 'Angry Young Men' of the period, I found myself carried to 'fame' on a wave of publicity -- only to discover that this kind of fame is one of the subtlest forms of obscurity. Everybody knew who I was, and nobody knew what I stood for. The public image meant that nobody was interested in what I had to say, for everyone was convinced that they already knew. I could talk until I was blue in the face about my attempt to revise the pessimistic existentialism of Heidegger, Camus and Sartre; as far as most people were concerned, I was an autodidact who was angry about something or other.
Colin Wilson