Bank Quotes - page 10
Ann looked down at him, spread on the bank preparing to go to sleep, and lost her temper. "Then you should go and tell him! You should look after him! He's all alone in this wood, and he's quite small, and he doesn't even know he's not supposed to go out of it. He probably doesn't even know how to work the field to get food. You - you calmly make him up, out of blood and - and nothing, and you expect him to do your dirty work for you, and you don't even tell him the rules! You can't do that to a person!"
Diana Wynne Jones
The hardship of it was a pleasure. Life was a pleasure; he looked back at its moments, many of them as shrouded in mist as the opposite bank of the Thames. Objectively, many of them held only misery, fear, confusion; but afterward, and even at the time, he had known an exhilaration stronger than the misery, fear, or confusion. A fragment of belief came to him from another epoch: Cogito ergo sum. For him that had not been true; his truth had been: Sentio ergo sum. I feel, so I exist. He enjoyed this fearful, miserable, confused life, and not only because it made more sense than nonlife. He could never explain that to anyone.
Brian Aldiss
At the beginning of the 1980s the world community faces much greater dangers than at any time since the Second World War. It is clear that the world economy is now functioning so badly that it damages both the immediate and longer-run interests of all nations...The problems of poverty and hunger are becoming more serious; there are already 800 million absolute poor and their numbers are rising; shortages of grain and other foods are increasing the prospect of hunger and starvation...Between 20 and 25 million children below the age of five die every year in developing countries...A number of poor countries are threatened with the irreversible destruction of their ecological systems while many more face growing food deficits and possibly mass starvation. In the international economy there is the possibility of... a collapse of credit with defaults by major debtors, or bank failures... [and] an intensified struggle for influence or control over resources leading to military conflicts.
Willy Brandt
I can call a president of the United States anything in the book but I can't touch Israel, which has Jewish-only roads in the West Bank. No American would tolerate that -- white-only roads... We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is...We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.
Helen Thomas
Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments and either assassinated or threatened the enemies of Islam with the death penalty. Similarly, Jewish fundamentalists have settled in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the avowed intention of driving out the Arab inhabitants, using force if necessary. Thus they believe that they are paving a way for the advent of the Messiah, which is at hand. In all its forms, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith.
Karen Armstrong
The new arguments for rules take an entirely different tack. They are based neither on the ignorance nor the knavery of public officials and, in fact, assume that everyone knows how the economy operates-even the government! Moreover, the government's objectives are assumed to coincide with the people's objectives, and everyone has rational expectations. Despite these seemingly ideal circumstances, modern critics argue that a central bank left with discretion will err systematically in the direction of excessive inflation. To remedy this distortion, they advocate a fixed rule.
Alan Blinder
Does he concede that the whole basis of the Maastricht treaty is the establishment of a European central bank which is staffed by bankers, independent of national Governments and national economic policies, and whose sole policy is the maintenance of price stability? That will undermine any social objective that any Labour Government in the United Kingdom-or any other Government-would wish to carry out. Does my hon. Friend recognise that the imposition of a bankers' Europe on the people of this continent will endanger the cause of socialism in the United Kingdom and in any other country?
Jeremy Corbyn
While one welcomes aid that gets through to help the poorest people in the poorest parts of the world, does my hon. Friend share my concern that some policies, particularly those adopted by the World Bank in its advice to poor countries in receipt of loans it organises, force on those countries economic models that often involve cuts in public expenditure which make the living conditions of people dependent on public services, health, education or housing worse because those countries are pursuing some economic Valhalla similar to that pursued by the present Government? Does he believe that the Government should consider their role in multinational agencies such as the World Bank as well as my hon. Friend's obvious and quite correct concern about the lack of spending on overseas aid in general?
Jeremy Corbyn
Far from there being a constant flow of resources and aid from northern countries to southern countries, the opposite is the case, and has been for most of the past 200 years. Colonialism was not about exporting civilisations; it was not about improving the lot of people in the poorest countries-it was driven by greed and avarice and a determination to control other people's lives. It was about ensuring that the work, the raw materials and the food of the poorer countries flowed out to the richest parts of the world. That is the legacy of colonialism and imperialism that we have to deal with today. I honestly believe that the role of the world's twin financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World bank, is essentially to reassert that old-world order so that once more a minority of northern, predominantly rich countries dominate the majority of southern, predominantly poor countries.
Jeremy Corbyn
It seems that we are revisiting the whole argument about a European central bank. Many of us have the deepest misgivings about the establishment of such a bank, with no accountability to member states and an office life of eight years, in which it can do what it likes, provided that it supports the market economy throughout Europe, despite the social consequences. There is no time limit on the period of office of the political directors, and there is nothing about who they would be or where they would come from. But I ask the quite serious question: what on earth are these political directors to do, where do they come from, to whom are they answerable and how do we get rid of them if we do not like what they do?
Jeremy Corbyn
My hon. Friend is right in saying that the Bank of England has often operated against the interests of Labour Governments. That is due to the mandarins who run it. If the hon. Gentleman has such doubts about the running of a bank which theoretically is state-owned and state-controlled, what influence does he think will be possible in the case of an independent central bank dedicated to a course of Euro-monetarism?
Jeremy Corbyn
If you're hell-bent on making your bank look and sound like a simpleton, a desk labelled Travel Money is still a bit too formal. Why not call it Oooh! Look at the Funny Foreign Banknotes instead? And accompany it with a doodle of a French onion-seller riding a bike, with a little black beret on his head and a baguette up his arse and a speech bubble saying, "Zut Alors! Here is where you gettez les Francs!"
Charlie Brooker
