It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

Our global economy is much more fragile than many of us realize.

A financial crisis is a great time for professional investors and a horrible time for average ones.

It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.

At my lowest point, I was nearly $700,000 in debt.

Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt. It’s a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can’t get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy.

The financial crisis should not become an excuse to raise taxes, which would only undermine the economic growth required to regain our strength.

A little over 5% of the world’s population produces almost 29% of the world’s goods and services.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.

Most poor people live in the poorest countries.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.

The Latin American debt that reached crisis levels from 1982 would have been sharply reduced by return of flight capital – in some cases, overcome, though all figures are dubious for these secret and often illegal operations.

Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter.

In Europe first and now in America, elected men have taken it upon themselves to indebt their people to create an atmosphere of dependency. And why? For their own selfish need to increase their own personal power.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

I declared bankruptcy, and that was the worst thing I ever should have done.

I used to have insecurity about my finances, then I announced that I had debt, and now I don’t have any insecurities.

Bad debt is debt that makes you poorer. I count the mortgage on my home as bad debt, because I’m the one paying on it. Other forms of bad debt are car payments, credit card balances, or other consumer loans.

The problem is that the U.S. government is the biggest debtor in the world, and those depending on it to take care of them will only become poorer.

It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.

Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges – on gifts, trades, loans – and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.

Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

I bet taxpayers remember providing more than $812 billion to Citigroup and Bank of America, two Wall Street banks, in 2009 to bail them out during the 2008 financial crisis. Taxpayers remember that generosity; big banks evidently don’t.

Although I don’t like the way the Chinese do business, I continue to do business in China. I have to. They’re the next world power.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

Studies have identified a significant ‚skills gap‘ between what students are currently being taught and the skills employers are seeking in today’s global economy. Our children must be better prepared than they are now to meet the future challenges of our ever-changing world.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.

No one saw the recession coming.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‚Look, here’s what happened.‘

During the Enron debacle, it was workers who took the pounding, not bankers. Not only did Enron employees lose their jobs, many lost their retirement savings. That’s because they were at the bottom of the investing food chain.

China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth.

A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.

We’re still in a recession. We’re not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.

A man in debt is so far a slave.