“If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.”
–Exodus 22:25

“At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.”
–Deuteronomy 15:1

“If he has exacted usury or taken increase— Shall he then live? He shall not live! If he has done any of these abominations, He shall surely die; His blood shall be upon him.”
–Ezekiel 18:13

“If you have money, do not lend it at interest, but give to one for whom you will not get it back.”
–Thomas 95

“If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much in gain.”
–Luke 6:34

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
–Mark 10:25

“The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. Funding I consider as limited, rightfully, to a redemption of the debt within the lives of a majority of the generation contracting it; every generation coming equally, by the laws of the Creator of the world, to the free possession of the earth he made for their subsistence, unincumbered by their predecessors, who, like them, were but tenants for life.”
–Thomas Jefferson

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”
–John Adams

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.”
–James Madison

“The bold effort the present [Second National] bank had made to control government, the distress it has wantonly produced… are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.”
–Andrew Jackson

“I killed the bank.”
–Andrew Jackson when asked about his greatest accomplishment

“People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work…. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan.”
–Thomas Edison

“I am more than ever convinced of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of political opinion — the only sure foundation and safeguard of republican government — would be exposed by any further increase of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities.”
–Martin Van Buren

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.”
–Abraham Lincoln, after the passing of the National Bank Act

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… and when you realize that the entire system is so easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” –James Garfield

“If, as I said, any persons are to make good deficiencies to the public creditor, besides the public at large, they must be those who managed the agreement. Why therefore are not the estates of all the comptrollers-general confiscated? Why not those of the long succession of ministers, financiers, and bankers who have been enriched whilst the nation was impoverished by their dealings and their counsels?” –Edmund Burke

Today: “83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. 61 percent of Americans ‘always or usually’ live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007. 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans… Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together. In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one. As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets. The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008. In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector. The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago….. Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009. Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years. The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.”
–Michael Snyder, Business Insider

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
–Thomas Jefferson

“…First by Inflation….”

“Indeed, Clinton gave a speech on March 15, 2007 to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in which she said “the alarm bell about the subprime home market has largely gone unnoticed by the (Bush) administration because they keep arguing we have to give trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthy”…. The evidence shows both Obama and Clinton were talking about various aspects of the issue as early as 2006, before it had ripened into a crisis.”
—Politifact.com

“Despite the ongoing adjustments in the housing sector, overall economic prospects for households remain good. Household finances appear generally solid, and delinquency rates on most types of consumer loans and residential mortgages remain low.”
–Ben Bernenke, Libertarian Republican and Greenspan acolyte, February, 2007

“I was aware that the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increased financial risk. But I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened home ownership are worth the risk.”
–Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Fed from 1987-2006, in September 2007

“Predatory lending aimed at racially segregated minority neighborhoods led to mass foreclosures that fueled the U.S. housing crisis, according to a new study published in the American Sociological Review.”
—Reuters

“…Then by Deflation…”

“House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is scheduled today to release a plan that would cut more than $6 trillion from President Barack Obama’s budget over 10 years, phase out traditional Medicare and call for a revamp of the tax code. ”
—Bloomberg News

“Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal cuts ‘nothing’ from Medicare, Social Security or defense in the next two to three years, and “in three years, he does not cut one dime from the debt.”
—Politifact, quoting David Stockman, Former Reagan Budget Director

“In a speech in February 2004, Greenspan suggested that more homeowners should consider taking out Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) where the interest rate adjusts itself to the current interest in the market. The fed own funds rate was at a then all-time-low of 1%. A few months after his recommendation, Greenspan began raising interest rates, in a series of rate hikes that would bring the funds rate to 5.25% about two years later. A triggering factor in the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis is believed to be the many subprime ARMs that reset at much higher interest rates than what the borrower paid during the first few years of the mortgage.
—Wikipedia.org on Greenspan

“For the fact is that the Obama stimulus — which itself was almost 40 percent tax cuts — was far too cautious to turn the economy around. And that’s not 20-20 hindsight: many economists, myself included, warned from the beginning that the plan was grossly inadequate. Put it this way: A policy under which government employment actually fell, under which government spending on goods and services grew more slowly than during the Bush years, hardly constitutes a test of Keynesian economics. Now, maybe it wasn’t possible for President Obama to get more in the face of Congressional skepticism about government. But even if that’s true, it only demonstrates the continuing hold of a failed doctrine over our politics. It’s also worth pointing out that everything the right said about why Obamanomics would fail was wrong. For two years we’ve been warned that government borrowing would send interest rates sky-high; in fact, rates have fluctuated with optimism or pessimism about recovery, but stayed consistently low by historical standards. For two years we’ve been warned that inflation, even hyperinflation, was just around the corner; instead, disinflation has continued, with core inflation — which excludes volatile food and energy prices — now at a half-century low. The free-market fundamentalists have been as wrong about events abroad as they have about events in America — and suffered equally few consequences. “Ireland,” declared George Osborne in 2006, “stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking.” Whoops. But Mr. Osborne is now Britain’s top economic official. And in his new position, he’s setting out to emulate the austerity policies Ireland implemented after its bubble burst. After all, conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic spent much of the past year hailing Irish austerity as a resounding success. “The Irish approach worked in 1987-89 — and it’s working now,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute last June. Whoops, again. But such failures don’t seem to matter. To borrow the title of a recent book by the Australian economist John Quiggin on doctrines that the crisis should have killed but didn’t, we’re still — perhaps more than ever — ruled by ‘zombie economics.’ Why?”
—Paul Krugman

“…First by Inflation…”

“In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks,”
–Spencer Bachus, Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services and TARP negotiator, December 2010

“It is plain hubris to think that this government, with its $14 trillion dollar debt, annual deficits, and wasteful-spending, is worthy of this plenipotentiary oversight,”
-Michelle Bachmann, January 2011, on her bill to repeal the financial reform bill

“The less we fund those [bank regulatory] agencies, the better America will be. I think anything we can do to slow down, deter or impede their ability to engage in this oppressive overregulation, which is freezing up our economy, would be good for our country.”
-Mitch McConnell, June 2011

“Well, it is a check that this public is looking for on this runaway agenda of this administration. They don’t want to see any more spending, especially if it promotes policies that kill jobs. That’s what you’ve got, both with the Obamacare bill and the Dodd-Frank bill.”
–Eric Cantor, 2011

“The House Appropriations Committee financial services subcommittee on Thursday approved its 2012 appropriations bill, which curbs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.”
–The Hill.com

“Last week, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, all four Republicans on the commission voted to exclude the following terms from the report: “deregulation,” “shadow banking,” “interconnection,” and, yes, “Wall Street.” When Democratic members refused to go along with this insistence that the story of Hamlet be told without the prince, the Republicans went ahead and issued their own report, which did, indeed, avoid using any of the banned terms.That report is all of nine pages long, with few facts and hardly any numbers. Beyond that, it tells a story that has been widely and repeatedly debunked — without responding at all to the debunkers.In the world according to the G.O.P. commissioners, it’s all the fault of government do-gooders, who used various levers — especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored loan-guarantee agencies — to promote loans to low-income borrowers. Wall Street — I mean, the private sector — erred only to the extent that it got suckered into going along with this government-created bubble. It’s hard to overstate how wrongheaded all of this is. For one thing, as I’ve already noted, the housing bubble was international — and Fannie and Freddie weren’t guaranteeing mortgages in Latvia. Nor were they guaranteeing loans in commercial real estate, which also experienced a huge bubble. Beyond that, the timing shows that private players weren’t suckered into a government-created bubble. It was the other way around. During the peak years of housing inflation, Fannie and Freddie were pushed to the sidelines; they only got into dubious lending late in the game, as they tried to regain market share.”
—Paul Krugman

“…Then by Deflation…”

“In addition to acknowledging that seniors, disabled and elderly people would be hit with much higher out-of-pocket health care costs, the CBO finds that by the end of the 10-year budget window [under Paul Ryan’s plan], public debt will actually be higher than it would be if the GOP just did nothing.”
—Talking Points Memo

“GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty recently called for $2 trillion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses in the next decade, as well as two to three times less federal spending – cutting a total of $8 trillion. But on Tuesday, Pawlenty expressed his foreign policy plans to remain involved in the Middle East – to “seize” the opportunity “amid the turmoil of the Arab Spring” and to “help promote freedom and democracy.” The GOP candidate said America should stop “leading from behind” and be more active in regions like Libya, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia.”
–Nicole Glass, FrumForum.com

“The $137 million deficit in the budget year ending June 30 represents about 0.456 percent of the $30 billion state budget, or less than half of 1 percent. The projected $3.6 billion deficit for the next two-year budget is more serious: about 12 percent of the overall budget…. In unveiling his two-year budget, Walker cut aid to local schools and government by about $1 billion. But the proposal, which now goes to the Legislature, included new spending in some areas, including adding $1 million in raises for prosecutors, $993,800 for additional public defenders and $1.04 million to investigate Internet crimes against children. On the opposite side of the ledger, the budget reduced revenue by some $140 million through a variety of tax cuts, including ones aimed at businesses and individuals with Health Savings Accounts.”
—Politifact.com

“…First by Inflation…”

“As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana…. The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And that provides only a modest economic stimulus, because the rich are less likely to spend their tax savings. ”
—New York Times

“After the worst crisis since the Great Depression, President Obama has unleashed an unusual force to regulate the financial system: a bunch of empty seats…. The Obama administration put up Peter A. Diamond for a position on the Federal Reserve board. Winning a little something called the Nobel Prize [4] hasn’t helped him with confirmation, however. Sen. Richard Shelby, the powerful Alabama Republican and ranking member of the banking committee, is standing in his way. The senator also quashed the nomination of Joseph A. Smith Jr. to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. But much of the blame for this situation lies with the Obama administration. It’s almost as if the president and his staff have thrown up their hands. The administration has had trouble finding good candidates who are willing to go through the vetting process and has shied away from fights. It also hasn’t seeded the ground or supported the nominations it has made, people complain.”
—ProPublica.org

“Schneiderman’s probe, news of which came out yesterday in this piece by Morgenson, reportedly targets the banks’ mortgage securitization process during the bubble years. Morgenson reported that Schneiderman is focused on at least three companies: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and old friend Goldman, Sachs. This investigation has the potential to be a Mother of All Nightmares situation for the banks for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the decision to go after the securitization process is a total prosecutorial bullseye. This is the ugly heart of the wide-scale fraud scheme of the bubble era. Again, the business model during this time was a giant bait-and-switch scam. Sleazy lenders like Countrywide and New Century first created huge masses of bad loans, committing every conceivable kind of fraud to get people into loans (from doctoring income statements with white-out to phonying FICO scores to engineering fake appraisals). They then moved the bad loans quickly to the big banks, which pooled them and chopped them up (this is the “securitization” process), sprinkled hocus-pocus math on them, and then sold them to suckers around the world as AAA-rated securities…..The reason this is such a potentially deadly investigation for the banks is that they seemed to be so close to getting away scot free. There is another investigation into the banks’ mortgage abuses by the states’ Attorneys General, led by Iowa AG Tom Miller, that was rumored to be headed toward a settlement, despite the fact that nothing like a complete investigation has been done. The expectation for some time has been that the banks would eventually have to pay a significant, but eminently survivable, settlement for abuses during the bubble era. Although the Miller probe was focused on practices like robo-signing and other such documentation abuses, it could theoretically have covered securitization as well. But if the AGs were to sign off on a friendly global settlement for mortgage abuses prematurely, it would be like a DA offering a millionaire murderer a 2-year plea bargain before the cops even had a chance to interview all the eyewitnesses. It would be a blatantly political arrangement. Such a desire to get some kind of deal done and sweep the mortgage mess under the rug once and for all seems almost universal among high-ranking politicians, and particularly in the Obama administration, which has acted throughout like it wants more than anything to simply get all of this over with and put in the past.”
—Matt Taibbi

“Schneiderman, a Democrat who rode to office by pointing out Wall Street’s misdeeds, requested documents earlier this year from Bank of America, the largest lender and mortgage servicer, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley regarding their mortgage operations…. Schneiderman’s inquiry also raises questions about the speed the Obama administration and a coalition of state attorneys general and bank regulators are moving towards a settlement agreement to resolve claims of widespread foreclosure abuse. The states’ top cops and representatives of the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Treasury Department are pushing the nation’s largest mortgage companies to pay about $20 billion in a deal to end the months-long probes into shoddy and possibly illegal practices employed by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial.”
—Huffington Post

“Afghan officials said on Thursday that they have arrested two former executives involved in the collapse of Kabul Bank.”
—New York Times

“A bitter cynic might suggest that such prosecutions [in America] have not happened because both political parties are desperately competing for Wall Street cash for the 2012 election, and nothing would doom the incumbent party’s chances more than holding Wall Street royalty accountable, along with the fact that the top levels of government are suffused with former bank officials and lobbyists– but everyone knows that American justice isn’t politicized that way, so that can’t be it (just like everyone knows that political considerations played no role whatsoever in the presidential shield of immunity lavished on high-level Bush officials).”
—Glenn Greenwald

“…Then By Deflation…”

“I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don’t spend all the money. [In the parable of Joseph and the “Good Pharaoh,”] You work hard for those six [read: seven] years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times [harder times?]. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it’s slavery. We become slaves to government.”
–Rick Perry, confusing the “Good Pharaoh” in Genesis with the “Bad Pharaoh” in Exodus

“[Joseph said:] Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt [in taxes] during the seven years of abundance. They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine.”
–Genesis 41:34-36

“It follows that the level of debt matters only if the distribution of net worth matters, if highly indebted players face different constraints from players with low debt. And this means that all debt isn’t created equal – which is why borrowing by some actors now can help cure problems created by excess borrowing by other actors in the past.”
–Paul Krugman

“The Democrats’ stimulus raised economic growth by as much as 4.5 percent in the last quarter and may have increased the number of people with jobs by more than 3 million, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released Tuesday.”
—The Hill.com

“…First by Inflation…”

“The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers’ Panic, was a financial crisis that occurred in the United States when the New York Stock Exchange fell close to 50% from its peak the previous year. Panic occurred, as this was during a time of economic recession, and there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies. The 1907 panic eventually spread throughout the nation when many state and local banks and businesses entered into bankruptcy. Primary causes of the run include a retraction of market liquidity by a number of New York City banks and a loss of confidence among depositors, exacerbated by unregulated side bets at bucket shops…. Production fell by 11%, imports by 26%, while unemployment rose to 8% from under 3%. Immigration dropped to 750,000 people in 1909, from 1.2 million two years earlier.”
—Wikipedia

“Imagine the situation back in what ev-psych types call the Ancestral Adaptive Environment. Suppose that two tribes–the Clan of the Cave Bear and its neighbor, the Clan of the Cave Bull–live in close proximity but follow different hunting strategies. The Cave Bears tend to hunt rabbits–a safe strategy, since you can be pretty sure of finding a rabbit every day, but one with a limited upside, since a rabbit is only a rabbit. The Cave Bulls, on the other hand, go after mammoths–risky, since you never know when or if you’ll find one, but potentially very rewarding, since one felled mammoth provides a yield of, well, elephantine proportions. Now suppose that for a year or two the Cave Bulls have been doing very well, making a killing practically every week. After a while, the natural instinct of the Cave Bears is to feel jealous, and to try to share in the good fortune by starting to act like Cave Bulls themselves. In the ancestral environment, that instinct was entirely appropriate: The kinds of events that would produce a good run of mammoths–favorable weather producing a lush crop of grass, migration patterns bringing large numbers of beasts into the district–tended to be persistent, so it was a sound idea to emulate whatever strategy had worked in the recent past. But transplant our tribes into the world of modern finance, and those instincts aren’t appropriate at all. Efficient-markets theory tells us that all the available information about a company is supposed to be already built into its current stock price, so that any future movement is inherently unpredictable. Rational investors, by this logic, should treat bygones as bygones: The fact that your neighbor made a lot of money in stocks last year while you stayed in cash is no reason to get into stocks now. But suppose that, for whatever reason, the market goes up month after month; your MBA-honed intellect may say, “Gosh, those P/Es look pretty unreasonable,” but your prehistoric programming is shrieking, “Me want mammoth meat!””
—Paul Krugman on Tech Bubble in 1998, before it crashed

“Of course, some people still deny that there’s a housing bubble. Let me explain how we know that they’re wrong. One piece of evidence is the sense of frenzy about real estate, which irresistibly brings to mind the stock frenzy of 1999. Even some of the players are the same. The [Conservative/Free Enterprise] authors of the 1999 best seller “Dow 36,000″ are now among the most vocal proponents of the view that there is no housing bubble.”
—Paul Krugman, August, 2005

“The Hamilton students sampled the predictions of 26 individuals who wrote columns… and evaluated the accuracy of 472 predictions…. Even when the students eliminated political predictions and looked only at predictions for the economy and social issues, they found that liberals still do better than conservatives at prediction. After [the winner] Krugman, the most accurate pundits were Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – all Democrats and/or liberals. Also landing in the “Good” category, however, were conservative columnists Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, along with Bush Administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Left-leaning columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post rounded out the “good” list. Those scoring lowest – “The Ugly” – with negative tallies were conservative columnist Cal Thomas; U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC); U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)[a pro-military Democrat]; U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, a McCain supporter and Democrat-turned-Independent from Connecticut; Sam Donaldson of ABC; and conservative columnist George Will.”
—ScienceDaily.com

“…Then by Deflation…”

“To repeal the act creating bank notes, or to restore to circulation the government issue of money will be to provide the people with money and will therefore seriously affect our individual profits as bankers and lenders…see your congressman at once and engage him to support our interest that we may control legislation.” -James Buel, American Bankers Association, 1877

“Statistics from the United Nations tell us that the bottom 40 percent of the population of the United States own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. That is about 120 million people. If each and every one of these individuals “forced” the banks to give them mortgages and loans, and then failed to pay them back, the worst that could happen would be a total national loss of 1 percent of wealth… Also curious are numbers on who actually lost the most in this Great Recession. According to a study by a professor at the University of California, the average American household lost an astounding 36 percent of their total wealth. But the top 1 percent households lost only 11 percent. So the net result is that the wealth distribution is even more unequal than it was it was before the financial crisis. Maybe the top 1 percent should be thanking the poor black folks for “causing” the financial meltdown.”
—InformationClearinghouse.com

“The rocket docket wasn’t created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.”
–Matt Taibbi, “Invasion of the Home Snatchers”

“I’ve called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years. This freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending — domestic [non-military and non-transportation] discretionary spending — to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. Let me repeat that. Because of our budget, this share of spending will be at its lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president. That level of spending is lower than it was under the last three administrations, and it will be lower than it was under Ronald Reagan.”
–Barack Obama, rated “Half True” by Politifact.com

“Back during the campaign, Obama said he would create a $10 billion fund to help homeowners facing foreclosure. “Too many families are unable to refinance because no one will lend to them, and they are unable to sell their homes because the housing market has fallen,” reads as statement of policy from Obama’s 2008 campaign. “As president, Obama will fight to ensure more Americans can achieve and protect the dream of home ownership.” We named it one of our top promises, among the most significant campaign pledges Obama made. And soon after his election, Obama outdid the promise of $10 billion, creating a foreclosure prevention fund that totaled $75 billion, paid for with funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Officials said the fund could help 9 million homeowners. We gave Obama a Promise Kept. But as many months went by, the program never lived up to its promise. As of January 2011, the program had given permanent loan modifications to only about 500,000 homeowners. The news website ProPublica has extensively investigated the program and reached a number of dismal conclusions…. With millions of homeowners still struggling to stay in their homes, the Obama administration’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention program has been weakened, perhaps fatally, by lax oversight and a posture of cooperation—rather than enforcement—with the nation’s biggest banks,” ProPublica reported. “Those banks, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Citibank, service the majority of mortgages.”
—Politifact.com

More on Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan:

“First appointed Federal Reserve chairman by President Ronald Reagan in August 1987, he was reappointed at successive four-year intervals until retiring on January 31, 2006 after the second-longest tenure in the position….. Although Greenspan was initially a logical positivist, he was converted to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism by her associate Nathaniel Branden. He became one of the members of Rand’s inner circle, the Ayn Rand Collective, who read Atlas Shrugged while it was being written. During the 1950s and 1960s Greenspan was a proponent of Objectivism, writing articles for Objectivist newsletters and contributing several essays for Rand’s 1966 book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal including an essay supporting the Gold Standard. Rand stood beside him at his 1974 swearing-in as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.”
—Wikipedia.com on Alan Greenspan

“[The teachings of Satanism are] just Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added.”
-Antony LeVay, infamous founder of “The Church of Satan” and author of The Satanic Bible (1976)

“The [Satanic Bible‘s] “Nine Satanic Statements“, one of the Church of Satan’s central doctrines, is a paraphrase, again unacknowledged, of passages from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.”
—SatanismCentral.com

“When [Ayn Rand’s friend] finally refused to continue their relationship, Rand furiously expelled him from her ‘movement’ and then scuttled the ‘movement’ itself. That was, curiously, all for the better, since under her control the Objectivist movement was taking on more and more of the authoritarian or totalitarian overtones of the very ideologies it was supposedly opposing. In another incident, related by the columnist Samuel Francis, when Rand learned that the economist Murray Rothbard’s wife, Joey, was a devout Christian, she all but ordered that if Joey did not see the light and become an atheist in six months, Rothbard, who was an agnostic, must divorce her. Rothbard never had any intention of doing anything of the sort, and this estranged him from Rand, who found such “irrational” behavior intolerable…. She may be taken, nevertheless, for what she will continue to be: An inspiring advocate for the free market and for the creativity of the autonomous individual.”
–Kelley Ross, “Libertarian” academic

“A heavy smoker who refused to believe that smoking causes cancer brings to mind those today who are equally certain there is no such thing as global warming. Unfortunately, Miss Rand was a fatal victim of lung cancer…. “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out” without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn “despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently”… She didn’t feel that an individual should take help. But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit. In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.”
—Huffington Post

“GOP leaders and conservative pundits have brought upon themselves a crisis of values. Many who for years have been the loudest voices invoking the language of faith and moral values are now praising the atheist philosopher Ayn Rand whose teachings stand in direct contradiction to the Bible. Rand advocates a law of selfishness over love and commands her followers to think only of themselves, not others. She said her followers had to choose between Jesus and her teachings.”
—American Values Network

“He said he had never understood his family until reading [about Ayn Rand]. It made him realize that they had mixed Rand’s strongly anti-government, unquestioningly pro-business, and individualistic worldview with biblical Christianity. Theologians call this “syncretism”—which George Barna calls America’s favorite religion.”
–Christianity Today, “Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Great Recession: Why Christians should be wary of the late pop philosopher and her disciples”

“When you vote for politicians who take from your back pocket to give to others, you think it’s compassionate, you think it’s caring? It’s not. It’s depriving the recipient of his own quest for self-interest. The brilliant writer and novelist, Ayn Rand, has written about this. Let me give you a couple quotes from Ayn Rand on this.”
–Rush Limbaugh, 2009

“Thanks very much for pamphlet. Am an admirer of Ayn Rand but hadn’t seen this study. ”
–Ronald Reagan

And yet……

“The Presidential election of 1976. I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him. My reasons are as follows: Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worst sense of that word—i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor (which, philosophically, is as untenable a position as one could choose—see Fred Kinnan in Atlas Shrugged, pp. 541-2). This description applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion.”
–Ayn Rand, 1978

“The threat to the future of capitalism is the fact that Reagan might fail so badly that he will become another ghost, like Herbert Hoover, to be invoked as an example of capitalism’s failure for another fifty years.”
–Ayn Rand, 1981

And yet…….

“Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere of the Republican party.”
–Mike Huckabee