Interest Rate Quotes
Debts accumulated by the allies in World War I was still outstanding a decade later. When it was proposed that the United States help reduce this debt, President Coolidge remarked:
Usury in orthodox Muslim terms means the charging of interest. Modern Islamic societies have developed a variety of methodologies for dealing with the usury prohibition yet functioning in a modern capitalist system. Orthodox Jews also have a Biblical prohibition against loans with interest. Fundamentalist Protestants of some sects also believe that loaning or borrowing money and charging interest is a sin prohibited by God.
What made the situation worse at the time that the same big banks who got government bailouts to prevent failure and received the 0.75 percent rate, turned around and lent the money to the students not only charging them 9 times what they paid for the money, but also getting a government guarantee that the loans would be repaid and/or government prohibition of students going bankrupt and discharging their debt like any other American in financial difficulty. So the banks made huge profits and yet took no risk—a strange notion in capitalism.
This is an excellent historical quotations showing how our government financed the Spanish American War. Wars have always placed economic stress on the nations which wage then. In the American Revolution we borrowed from individuals and from France. After that all our wars were financed by a combination of war bond sales, other borrowing, and tax increases—all except the George W, Bush Afghanistan and Iraq Wars which were not funded thus complicating an economic crises caused by Bush’s Great Recession. While some critics saw Bush’s actions as reprehensible and irresponsible—it was the only time in American history where tax rates were cut in wartime, Bush’s team had a plan. They had an ideological point of view that said that major tax cuts would spur the economy and lead to MORE government revenue as a result of the growth that would come. However, in this case there not only was no growth, but there was the worst recession in American History. But there was a plan to finance the war—it just went awry.
