Fees Quotes
Incredibly, the judges received a higher fee if they found that an accused Negro was a fugitive slave and must be returned, than if he found that it was a case of mistaken identity or the laws of the northern state allowed mandated freedom. Despite the bias, the moral issue was so profound that many Northern judges refused to return fugitive slaves, even after the Fugitive Slave Act.
The notion that public lands should be available for the grazing of private herds of animals is very old. Note that the Roman law expressly forbade the collection of fees for grazing rights. The reasoning was that virtually all free Romans had animals that needed grazing and pasture land. So all citizens could take advantage of the public facility. As society became more industrialized and specialized, the percentage of citizens who could benefit reduced over time until there became less than 1 percent of citizens who could benefit from a asset that was paid for and maintained by all citizens. Then there was a rationale for charging user fees.
This quotation is classic as it digested the major reasons for the worst financial crises since the Great Depression into one paragraph that captured the essence of the problem. The great dispute has been ever since, who let this happen, who was supposed to stop it from happening, and who did what to correct the problem afterwards so that it would not happen again? In this situation, the Wall Street Houses had paid securities rating firms to give these bonds an AAA rating even though they were backed by very risky mortgages none of which had AAA ratings.
