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bank(er)s

Wednesday 6th of May 2026

2008 financial crisis I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system. George W. Bush © 2019 Kwiple.com
Bank regulators When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial? Elizabeth Warren to bank regulators, at her 1st Banking Committee hearing (2013) © 2019 Kwiple.com
Bankers The Bank of Mom and Dad America's No. 1 mortgage lender © 2016 Kwiple.com
Bankers They just announced earnings and they were incredible. They were very substantial. Will you say, “Thank you, Mr. President, at least, huh?” Donald Trump, to Mary Erdoes, head of asset and wealth management at JPMoran Chase, at the signing of the U.S.-China Phase One Trade Agreement, January 15, 2019 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Bankers Your definition of accountable is to push the blame to your low-level employees, who dont't have the money for a fancy PR firm to defend themselves. It's gutless leadership. The only way that Wall Street will change is if executives face jail time when they preside over massive frauds. Elizabeth Warren to John Stumpf, chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, who the Senate Banking Committee was questioning about nearly 2,000,000 fee-generating accounts and credit cards opened without customers' knowledge, for which Stumpf was “deeply sorry,” while not promising to claw back compensation paid to any executive in the chain of command © 2016 Kwiple.com
Bankers say The analogy I use was that it was like lions hunting zebras. They would look for the weakest, the ones that would put up the least resistance. Former Wells Fargo employee describing how bankers there created unauthorized or unnecessary accounts for customers. Quoted by New York Times, October 21, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Bankers say Don't get caught © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say Give poor people credit cards © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say Heads I win, tails taxpayers lose © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. chatter by a member of The Cartel, a group of traders from six banks that used an exclusive chatroom and coded language to rig foreign exchange rates for their personal profits from 2007 to 2013 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say LTL online shorthand for “Let's Talk Live and avoid a trail” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say My garbage disposal eats better than 98 percent of the world. @GSElevator, the tweeting banker also known as “J. T. Stone” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say Praise ye The God of Gold William Walton, “Belshazzar's Feast”  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say Privatize profits, socialize risks  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say They let us look at the money. They just don't give us any. Karen Akers, bank teller, quoted in The Great Divergence  by Timothy Noah © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say You start with very simple tasks such as looking for data and maybe putting into Powerpoint a slide that was already drafted. When you gradually gain your seniors' confidence, they will give you more responsibility until you reach the ‘holy grail’: doing the Excel model yourself. a young banker, Financial Times, July 11, 2014 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bankers say You've been denied © 2015 Kwiple.com
Banking Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking. Walter Bagehot © 2023 Kwiple.com
Banks Virtually no big United States banking institution has done new business with Mr. Trump in years, in part because of his history of bankruptcies and his penchant for litigation. During orientation for new employees, Goldman Sachs specifically used to use Mr. Trump as an example of the kind of prospective client to avoid. Andrew Ross Sorkin, September 27, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say Nobody ever  cashes my checks. They frame them! Donald Trump © 2019 Kwiple.com
Corporate governance As Mr [Charles] Dumas argues in his book [Populism and Economics] this Victorian invention [limited liability] ensures that a company and its owners have only limited exposure to damaging consequences of their actions. Yet the implicit contract behind limited liability – companies pay tax in exchange for limited exposure – has broken down because globalisation has turned corporate taxes into an increasingly voluntary levy. Limited liability also contributed to excessive risk-taking in banking before the 2007-8 crisis. John Plender, Financial Times, July 26, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Great Recession Moneyed interests understand that with no second FDR, no incorruptible new cop on the financial beat, no return to the rules that once made banking boring but safe, they have nothing to fear from us, and may do as they please. This is the real tragedy of the Great Recession. Thomas Frank, Pity the Billionaire  © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Figures from the New York comptrollers's office showed the average bonus [of the city's traders and bankers] rose by 2 per cent to $172,860 in 2014 even though the industry was 4.5 per cent less profitable than a year earlier. … The shrunken securities industry accounts for less than 5 per cent of New York City's private sector jobs but 21 per cent of wages paid in the city. Financial Times, March 12, 2015 (2014 average annual NYC wage = $63,460; analysts' average = $250,000 to $750,000; $172,860 bonus = 2.7 times NYC avg. wage) © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality While wages have stagnated in the rest of the economy, the average New York banker's bonus rose to $164,530 in 2013. That's on top of an average base salary of around $200,000. Wall Street bankers now make more than five times the average New York City salary, compared with less than two times the average in 1981. Salvatore Babones, Sixteen for '16 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Innovation The ATM has been the only useful innovation in banking for the past 20 years. Paul Volcker, December 8, 2009 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary banking (bangk'ing), n. Synonym for gambling. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Prohibit private equity funds from designating or paying for legal counsel that scrutinize potential loans banks give the funds to finance buyouts © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Require banks giving financial advice to clients to put the client's interests before their own © 2015 Kwiple.com
Lobbyists We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you're a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you. If you're a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.  Mick Mulvaney, Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, urging bankers to lobby Congress to screw consumers by castrating the Board © 2018 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Ex-Goldman Trader Says Bonus Cut to $8.25 Million Unfair headline, bloomberg.com, June 18, 2014, about Deeb Amin Salem, former Goldman Sachs bond trader who, disappointed after telling his mom he expected a $13 million bonus and by losing at arbitration, sued Goldman in court for more than $16 million © 2015 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Maximizing overdraft fees by reordering transactions to ensure that larger ones are charged before smaller ones © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Allowing – even encouraging – lenders to charge Blacks and Latinos higher interest rates for car loans is change we believe in © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Let financial institutions fuck consumers and students without accountability The deep story of attempts by Republicans like Jeb Hensarling to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the only government agency whose purpose is to protect people from financial predators and the only one where people can register a complaint and track and view all complaints online © 2015 Kwiple.com
Segregation Segregation did this to Gary. When the jobs left, the whites could move, and they did. But we blacks didn't have a choice. They wouldn't let us into their new neighborhoods with the good jobs, or if they let us, we sure as hell couldn't afford it. Then to make it worse, when we looked at the nice houses they left behind, we couldn't buy them because the banks wouldn't lend us money. 78-year-old black Gary, Indiana, resident quoted in The Guardian, March 28, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements deter “crime in the suites” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot They get paid like geniuses, and yet, every ten years, they need bailing out. Bankers portrayed by Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker, April 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Companies paying billions in fines without acknowledging any guilt; executives staying in place, immune to prosecution © 2015 Kwiple.com
 
State of the union Wall Street is not primarily  a helpmeet to Main Street, as it once was. It’s the tail that wags the dog. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, February 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
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Wealth inequality Wealth management loans at JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley have grown 50 per cent in the past four years, compared with only 9 per cent for their overall loan book. … JPMorgan and Citi are now lending more to a small number of ultra-high net worth clients than to their millions of credit card customers. A decade ago, JPMorgan was lending five times as much to credit card customers as it did to private clients. … Controversially, the borrowings can also serve to lower taxes. Instead of selling assets to raise cash — and facing a capital gains tax — high net-worth clients obtain funding by borrowing against the value of their investments. Financial Times, May 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com