Arthur Bentley Quotes
The farmer may often have suffered from excessive interest and grasping creditors; but it was no less frequently the avarice of the lender that got him into trouble than the fact that he was too sanguine and too prone to believe that he could safely go into debt, on the assumption that crops and prices in the future would equal those in the present.
Arthur F. Bentley, Economic Researcher, The Condition of the Western Farmer as Illustrated by the Economic History of a Nebraska Township, 1893
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See Daniel Webster for an earlier expression of this notion.
Sherman, at the height of the California Gold Rush, took a private assignment for Moffett & Company, establishing and running an assaying, banking and minting company in San Francisco
Such an interest rate was not considered high, much less usurious.
This is essentially what happened in the Economic Meltdown of 2008 leading to the Great Recession.
At the time there was a worldwide recession and although the United States economy was not in very good shape, it was better than the other democracies and those nations with better economies then were authoritarian governments where investors did not trust their currencies. As a result, many wealthy people and businesses throughout the world were willing to lend money to the United States as a safe haven.
The very act of printing money created a debt—at the time and until the Nixon Administration which went off the gold standard—the government owed the gold or silver and the spicie—the printed money—was a promissory note.
Banks and other lending institutions don’t want to risk their loan money. So they prefer to lend money to those who do not need it rather than those who do.
Trump as a business man was notorious for setting up business deals where his partners would put up the money. If the enterprise failed the partners were at risk and lost their money while either did not or lost very little. If money was made, however, he took a large share. He not only did this many times but actually admitted it and bragged about his ability to do that. Incredibly enough he even extended this technique to his charity giving. The vast majority of the money he did good things with through his foundation came from other people. There were many years where he gave not a penny to his own foundation, but gave away and took the credit for what was done with other people’s money. The recipients of the foundations grants mostly assumed that Trump was being generous with his own money, and he never disabused them.
The condition of the western farmer as illustrated by the economic history of a Nebraska township;
