Government Securities Quotes & Sayings

Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans. — Thomas Sowell

There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production. — Ayn Rand

No one pushed harder than Congressman Barney Frank to force banks and other financial institutions to reduce their mortgage lending standards, in order to meet government-set goals for more home ownership. Those lower mortgage lending standards are at the heart of the increased riskiness of the mortgage market and of the collapse of Wall Street securities based on those risky mortgages. — Thomas Sowell

THE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. — John Stuart Mill

From coast to coast, the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission have ensnared people not only at hedge funds, but at technology and pharmaceutical companies, consulting and law firms, government agencies, and even a major stock exchange. — Preet Bharara

One way to ease liquidity for banks is that the government can buy all highly rated securities held by the banks. Every single bank in the U.A.E. has some sovereign debts in their portfolios. I am not asking them to buy any junk bonds, rather the high quality U.A.E. government debt. — Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair

In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities. — Janet Yellen

Anyone believing the TPP is good for Americans take note: The foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based corporations could just as easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits - say, a regulation protecting American consumers from unsafe products or unhealthy foods, investors from fraudulent securities or predatory lending, workers from unsafe working conditions, taxpayers from another bailout of Wall Street, or the environment from toxic emissions. — Robert Reich

The organization of the government itself is something which we ought to examine in a more self-conscious way - the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The mission that each of them has is mainly economic but should be informed by good organizational practices. — Oliver E. Williamson

Mortgage securities. Pooled together from thousands of mortgages around the United States, these bonds are issued by agencies like the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae") or the Government National Mortgage Association ("Ginnie Mae"). However, they are not backed by the U.S. Treasury, so they sell at higher yields to reflect their greater risk. Mortgage bonds generally underperform when interest rates fall and bomb when rates rise. (Over the long run, those swings tend to even out and the higher average yields pay off.) Good mortgage-bond funds are available from Vanguard, Fidelity, and Pimco. But if a broker ever tries to sell you an individual mortgage bond or "CMO," tell him you are late for an appointment with your proctologist. — Benjamin Graham

Some of the structural drivers of inflation have also weakened. Trade unions have become less powerful. Loss-making state industries have been privatized. But, perhaps most importantly of all, the social constituency with an interest in positive real returns on bonds has grown. In the developed world a rising share of wealth is held in the form of private pension funds and other savings institutions that are required, or at least expected, to hold a high proportion of their assets in the form of government bonds and other fixed income securities. In 2007 a survey of pension funds in eleven major economies revealed that bonds accounted for more than a quarter of their assets, substantially lower than in past decades, but still a substantial share.71 With every passing year, the proportion of the population living off the income from such funds goes up, as the share of retirees increases. — Niall Ferguson

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people. — Andrew Mellon

The first symptom of the trouble appeared when Madison studied Hamilton's proposal for the funding of the domestic debt. On the one hand, Hamilton's recommendation looked straightforward: All citizens who owned government securities should be reimbursed at par - that is, the full value of the government's original promise. But many original holders of the securities, mainly veterans of the American Revolution who had received them as pay for their service in the war, had then sold them at a fraction of their original value to speculators. What's more, the release of Hamilton's plan produced ... — Joseph J. Ellis

Hamilton used the sinking fund to maintain the confidence of creditors in the government's securities; he had no intention of paying off the outstanding principal of the debt. Retiring the debt would only destroy its usefulness as money and as a means of attaching investors to the federal government. — Gordon S. Wood

There's only one thing that all of the central banks control and that is the base, their own liability, and they can control that in various ways. They can control it directly by open market operations, buying and selling government securities or other assets, for example, buying and selling gold, or they can control it indirectly by altering the rate at which banks lend to one another. — Milton Friedman

The president has great confidence in him because he made his pile, has invested all his money in Government securities and knows all of the tricks of the trade. Apparently he is going on the assumption that Kennedy would now like to make a name for himself for the sake of his family, but I have never known many of these cases to work out as expected."29 — Richard E. Farley

As soon as Mr. Roosevelt took office, the Federal Reserve began to buy government securities at the rate of ten million dollars a week for 10 weeks, and created one hundred million dollars in new [checkbook] currency, which alleviated the critical famine of money and credit, and the factories started hiring people again. — Eustace Mullins

The idea was to reinvent mortgages by bundling thousands of them together as the backing for new and alluring securities that could be sold as alternatives to traditional government and corporate bonds - in short, to convert mortgages into bonds. — Niall Ferguson

Let the corporations do as they please
pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets
and it is none of the federal government's business to interfere with the will of heaven. — Lewis H. Lapham

The right and the physical power of the people to resist injustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people. — Lysander Spooner