Financial literacy

“ Then, too, the subtle process by which the man satisfies himself that he can afford to buy. Talk of Wall Street and financiering! No subtle manager or broker ever saw through a maze of financial embarrassments half so quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what he must have. ”

“ In the course of my task I shall describe such parts of the general financial structure as will place my readers, especially those unfamiliar with its more complicated conditions, in a mental state to comprehend the methods by which the savings they think are safely guarded in the banks, trust and insurance companies, are so manipulated by the votaries of frenzied finance as to be in constant jeopardy. ”

“ He was forty-four years of age, possessed nearly a million and three-quarters of francs in cash, producible on the green cloth at a day's notice, and was the most plausible talker on finance in Europe. This last was a bad symptom, indeed, for it is well known that men who remain victors in finance, who really do extricate estates and countries from financial difficulties, are not apt to talk very effectively on the subject. Successful finance is little more than paying your debts and living within your income, neither of which affords material for striking rhetoric. ”

“ Newcomb that the popular instruction at present most urgently demanded is in the A, B, C, of financial science. In the miniature form of "Harper's Half-Hour Series" the author has brought out a succession of chapters on "Labor," "Capital," "Wages," "Value," the "Different Kinds of Money," "Public Faith," and the "Lessons of History," which are written in a clear, simple, instructive, and most convincing manner. Such nimble little pocketbooks, pointedly summing up these large subjects, are wanted by the people, and are capable of doing more efficient service than larger books. ”

“ If the natural reading produced some strange or arbitrary result there might be reason to hesitate; but in this case the literal reading makes excellent sense in serving the very rational and desirable end of financial economy. ”

“ Without going into shades of encyclopedic meaning, I would define, for the purpose of this discussion, a financier as a man who has some recognized relation and responsibility toward the larger monetary affairs of the public, either by administering deposits and loaning funds or by being a wholesale or retail distributor of securities.
To all such the confidence of the financial community, which naturally knows them best, and of the investing public is absolutely vital. Without it, they simply cannot live. ”

“ With the third method a permanent increase is secured in the capital funds available for use in the business. Financial policy, governed by the needs of the business and its markets, will always dictate the method to be used for extinguishing or contracting a debt. ”

“ The work that you do – enhancing financial stability among consumers, providing investment counsel, and in many cases, educating consumers on something as basic as the need for a savings account – promotes the American dream of opportunity for all our citizens. ”

“ Complicated financial adjustments belong to a lower plane: the great financier may have no aptitude in reducing results to a decimal. But there is this distinction, that whereas in the intricate calculations of secondary finance the figures are mere counters, the elaboration of accepted data, in the higher and simpler finance they are symbols. ”

“ At least you will find the history of a colossal business affair involving millions of dollars and manned by the financial leaders of the moment. It is a fair representation of financial methods and commercial morals as they exist in America at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a contemporary document the narrative should have value ”

“ After the general principles of government are properly formulated in Constitutions and vitality given them by laws, a correct, a scientific financial system stands next in importance. If a country have a true system of government, and do not have a true system of finance, it can never attain to any permanent prosperity. Literally speaking, finance is a part of government ”

“ In conclusion, I submit that the whole plan as we've worked it out does not introduce a single foreign element but creates out of our own practices, which have developed out of our own peculiar conditions, a financial and banking system, founded upon sound economic principles. ”

“ All these various forms of banking are distinct in character and economically the funds of each perform a peculiar function that must be recognized and observed or we shall make a great fundamental error in constructing what we hope will prove a sound financial and banking system. We must provide that the commercial function, the savings function, the trust function shall be kept apart by separating the funds arising from each, and keeping them completely segregated, in order that the country may always know just what its commercial fund is, as distinguished from its investment fund. ”

“ But this banking scheme does not add to production. (5) It is but a scheme for destroying one source of income of the rich or appropriating it to the poorer producer. Without any attempt at deduction experience dictates the induction that the chances are in favor of the man with a special faculty for successful financial operations rather than of students of principles. The man who can actually value a horse, a house, a crop of wheat, is more useful in pursuing his function as a speculator than a student who can ably analyze the components of value by prolonged and tardy research. ”

“ We became part of what is nowadays quite an important element in the confusion of our world, that multitude of economically ascendant people who are learning how to spend money. It is made up of financial people, the owners of the businesses that are eating up their competitors, inventors of new sources of wealth such as ourselves ”

“ It may be added that, to the leading idea of the monetary benefit, is, in our idea united that, of assuring to the workers in this great movement of association one of the indispensable organs to a general and truly democratic financial service and a powerful instrument of economic education, for it will accustom the working-class societies which connect themselves with it to the invaluable discipline of a strict and permanent bookkeeping. ”

“ Keeping expenditures within the income is only the ABC of the financial knowledge required, although, like other ABC's, it is essential to the acquirement of deeper knowledge. It is not enough that the housekeeper merely succeeds in keeping out of debt. ”

“ Wealth will not necessarily procure a membership in this great financial emporium. The applicant must be a person of good repute. It numbers men of great wealth, men of a high order of talent, men of scholarly tastes, connoisseurs in art, students of science, literature and philosophy, and men capable of standing at the helm and giving direction to vast enterprises in the domain of finance and commerce. ”

“ It is not a case where each man counts [Pg 41] one. There are centres of prestige and power, bankers and financial magnates, whose opinions and decisions count heavily, and waves of optimism and pessimism, which affect the whole group. We shall discuss these matters more fully in connection with the analysis of credit, at a later point of our study. For the present, it is enough to point out that the whole thing cannot be explained on the basis of the values of consumers' goods, and that the values of consumers' goods are only in small part explained by the intensities of the wants they serve. ”

“ As the financial responsibilities of the paper have grown during the past six years, however, it has become apparent that we must not merely publish the paper each year and hope to pay our bills but that we must study the question of financing a growing paper with ever growing needs of expansion and consequent growing financial risks. ”

“ Thus we have the many forms of paper money so familiar to everybody and the various practices and speculative theories regarding it, which make a large part of the discussion of financial questions throughout the world. ”

“ Now this group in the past through their control direct or inter-related has been able to dominate the centers of credit, the money loaning institutions, such as the great banks and insurance companies. By this means they have been in a measure able to keep to themselves the great industrial exploitations dependent on the ability to finance in the hundreds of millions. More, they have been able to limit to narrow fields such men as myself and other newcomers, who wish to rise to the same financial advantage. ”

“ Few people have the sense of financial individuality strongly developed. They do not know what it means to be a controller of wealth, to have that which releases the sources of social action—its medium of exchange. They want money, but not for money’s sake. They want it for what it will buy in the way of simple comforts, whereas the financier wants it for what it will control—for what it will represent in the way of dignity, force, power. ”

“ The history of the last half-century is accordingly in large measure a history of financial titans, whose methods were not scrutinised with too much care and who were honoured in proportion as they produced the results, irrespective of the means they used. ”

“ There should be nothing in finance that any man or woman of ordinary intelligence and experience cannot understand, and I purpose to explain here the machinery of the "System" so that every one will exactly understand it from headlight to rear-end lantern. Many intelligent people have no clear idea of what a certificate of stock or a bond really is, and the words "money," "stock-exchange," and "finance" are mere terms which they glibly use without knowledge of their meaning. ”

“ There was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her previsions: she cared about what were considered refinements, and not about the money that was to pay for them. ”

“ I think that bankers, brokers, and other business men who are interested in the general problems of money, trade, speculation and credit, will find the book of use. Naturally, however, it is my hope that the special student of money and banking, and the special student of economic theory will find the book of interest. ”

“ The conclusion was inevitable, that there have been no acknowledged or even known, fundamental principles of finance operating in any of the many systems of the many nations, and that the so-called money of the world is not now, nor ever was, money, in the scientific sense of that term. ”

“ By paper money, in its obnoxious sense, I understand paper issues on credit alone, without capital, without funds assigned for its payment, resting only on the good faith and the future ability of those who issue it. ”

“ I, says debt stock, encourage industry, by taking way your money; and I, says bank stock, by pouring money into your pockets. When, by theory or experience, has it ever been said, that either the redundancy of money, or the loss of earnings, was an encouragement to industry? If the calculation of a false opinion, that industry enjoys her own earnings, is the best mode to which all orders, titled or stock, can resort for her encouragement, it is evident that the mode would be improved, by making the opinion true. Fulfilment would be a stronger excitement to industry, than disappointed hope. ”

“ The minutes we spend in becoming expert in finance we lose in production. The place to finance a manufacturing business is the shop, and not the bank. I would not say that a man in business needs to know nothing at all about finance, but he is better off knowing too little than too much, for if he becomes too expert he will get into the way of thinking that he can borrow money instead of earning it and then he will borrow more money to pay back what he has borrowed, and instead of being a business man he will be a note juggler, trying to keep in the air a regular flock of bonds and notes. ”

“ Mankind has been taught that in the essence of things fiscal your question of currency is as intricate and involved as was the labyrinth of Minos. And then, to add ill-doing to ill-teaching, our own crazy-patch system of finance has been in every one of its patches cut and basted and stitched with an interest of politics or of private gain to guide the shears and needle of what money-tailor was at work. ”

“ The rules of private finance, it such there be, have not yet been formulated, and it is indeed only in recent years that economic writers have sought to coördinate the rules and principles of public finance into a science of finance. ”

“ Imagine yourself by nature versed in the arts of finance, capable of playing with sums of money in the forms of stocks, certificates, bonds, and cash, as the ordinary man plays with checkers or chess. ”

“ This is the debt that society pays for its occasional lapses in finance, just as its lapses in matters of taste are paid for by the enriching of those who provide it with rubbishy stuff to read, or rubbishy shows in picture palaces. The education of the individual in the matter of spending or investing his or her money is one of the most pressing needs of the future, and only by its progress can the evils which are usually laid to the door of finance be cured by being attacked in their real home. ”

“ Chamberlain said: "Finance is the crux of the situation. Upon our finance depends entirely the extent to which we shall be able to develop this new experiment. With us, in fact, money is the root of all good. ”