"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of one?"
— Mackie Messer, The Threepenny Opera
"Give a man a gun and he'll rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he'll rob the world."
— Tyrell Wellick, Mr. Robot
Umberto Calvini: What Skarssen is attempting to do is to make the IBBC the exclusive broker of Chinese small arms to the Third World, and the missile deal is the gateway transition.
Louis Salinger: Yeah, but billions of dollars invested simply to be a broker? There can't be that much profit in it for them.
Umberto Calvini: No, this is not about making profit from weapons sales. This is about control.
Eleanor Whitman: Control the flow of weapons, control the conflict?
Umberto Calvini: No. No, no, the IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn't to control the conflict, it's to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt... you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry: to make us all - whether we be nations or individuals - slaves to debt.
Louis Salinger: Yeah, but billions of dollars invested simply to be a broker? There can't be that much profit in it for them.
Umberto Calvini: No, this is not about making profit from weapons sales. This is about control.
Eleanor Whitman: Control the flow of weapons, control the conflict?
Umberto Calvini: No. No, no, the IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn't to control the conflict, it's to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt... you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry: to make us all - whether we be nations or individuals - slaves to debt.
Bella: You've fallen badly behind, Roger. We think you're fading.
Rod: Mammon Investments doesn't carry bad debts.
Bella: We're high-octane people. We're going to have to activate the penalty clause. C'mon. Let's try for the burn.
Rod: Mammon Investments doesn't carry bad debts.
Bella: We're high-octane people. We're going to have to activate the penalty clause. C'mon. Let's try for the burn.
— Hellblazer: Going For It
"Oh, oh," said Herr Syrup, sympathetically, for not even the owners of the Black Sphere Line could be as ruthless as any and all Martian bankers. They positively enjoyed foreclosing. They made a ceremony of it, at which dancing clerks strewed cancelled checks while a chorus of vice presidents sang a litany. "And now business is not so good, vat?"
— The Makeshift Rocket, Poul Anderson
There's nothing an adventurer can't face with a bunch of derivatives, a diversified stock portfolio, and absolutely no morals whatsoever.
— description of the "Bankster" skill tree, Dungeons of Dredmor
The last time I died on stage was in March of last year, when I did a gig for a financial reporting company. Now, I don't know what this company does apart from fail to see a crash coming, but the audience were just bankers, and I mean that in every way it can be interpreted. When I say they were bankers, they weren't nice bankers; they weren't bank managers, mortgage providers or business advisers. No, these were the gambling end of the banking industry, the speculators. You know the people whose fault everything is? The people you get a cheap round of applause for slagging off on Question Time? Well, they were the audience. And it was their chance to show me that they were people just like anybody else, and they could have a laugh just like anybody else, and let me tell you, they fuckin' blew that gig. They fuckin' hated me. There was just an overall feeling in the room of (*posh accent*) "Why is this long-haired pikey yelling at us?" ...At one point this guy turned around to look at me like I stank of shit and he'd just caught a whiff. That hit me harder than any heckle and I have to admit I lost my cool. I said, "Dude," (Because bankers love being called 'Dude' by someone who looks like me.) "there's no need to look at me like that. I appreciate that it's not going well, but I'm just trying to make you laugh and you're looking at me like I crashed the economy into the fuckin' dirt." I learned that day that these people cannot laugh at themselves. I was supposed to do twenty minutes for them, I did eight.
— Ed Byrne, Outside Looking In
Timothy Cavendish: Don't you have a conscience?
Denholme Cavendish: I sat on the board of a merchant bank for thirty years.
That is Athena Savalas. Billionaire banker, Herald of Providence and bane of the middle class.
— Diana, Hitman 2 (The Bank Heist, New York)
"You know what I hate about fucking banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here's a number - every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?"
—Ben Rickert, The Big Short
"Basically, Lewis Ranieri's mortgage bonds were amazingly profitable for the big banks. They made billions and billions on their 2% fee they got for selling each of these bonds. But then, they started running out of mortgages to put in them. After all, there are only so many homes and so many people with good enough jobs to buy them, right? So, the banks started filling these bonds with riskier and riskier mortgages. That way, they can keep that profit machine churning, alright? By the way, these risky mortgages are called subprime. So, whenever you hear the word subprime, think shit."
"Who are you, a drug-dealer or a banker? 'Cause if you're a banker you can fuck right off!"
—Pub-Goer, The Big Short
"They already put my ideas into practice. The bank saves money, and they are using me, and I am the fool."
—Johnny, The Room (2003)
...or the banking business, which doesn’t care whether anybody lives or dies but would like a lot of hot Russian mafia money to flash about the dying nervous system of the finance industry as though we’re treating Aids with cocaine...
At the bank, they call you "the Killer." Mortgage rates are rising, so there are plenty of victims. You target outstanding loans and go after them. You can get blood out of a stone.
Shane Bush, whom you remember from school, married some slag when he was eighteen and has three children. They got a mortgage and bought a terraced house in a drab part of town. Shane should have been a council tenant like his parents, but home-ownership was sold to him as a birthright in the early '80s, and his dream is only just going sour. He's well behind on his repayments and bridging loans are getting him in deeper.
You foreclose and put the house up for auction In Vanda's name, you buy the house at a knock-down price, the resell it at a profit within two days. There are plenty of opportunities like this.
"If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
— John Paul Getty
