It is said that Julius Caesar borrowed so much money to become elected pontifex maximus that he essentially forced his creditors to support his political ambitions in the hope of seeing some payment on the debts.

So, essentially, ‘twas ever so.

Related, on a broader level: “Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god. Thoughts of a Biologist” (Jean Rostand)

http://evene.lefigaro.fr/citation/tue-homme-assassin-tue-mil...

You get this quote in Civ VI if you research banking. They attribute it to Getty as well.

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Banking_(Civ6)

It’s no coincidence the US, the most powerful country in the world, tries to get every other country to buy as much of its debt as possible.

We owe everyone billions or trillions. They’d hate to see us (or our dollar) fall.

Couldn't the causality be reversed here? If you're powerful, people are compelled to lend to you. See the situation with government bonds.

So many "paradoxes" make perfect sense if you flip the causality.

We need to revisit this after the credit crunch -

"Owe Your Banker £1k You are at his mercy; Owe Him £1M the position is reversed; But if everyone owes the banker £1M then its everyone's problem"

Is the usage of "your banker" vs "the bank" a difference between British English and American English or a difference between 1940s English and modern English?

The quote needs adjusting for inflation though.

The article is about origins of a quote and has variations on the numbers. 1,000 vs 1,000,000 100 vs 100,000,000 100 vs 100,000

More than smart-ass quotes, I'm curios about these sorts of flips in risk/value in a general abstract sense. What is this sort of thing called? What are examples on other domains beyond lending?

> to the British War Cabinet in 1945 [...] we have persuaded the outside world to lend us upwards of the prodigious total of £3,000 million. The very size of these sterling debts is itself a protection. The old saying holds. Owe your banker £1,000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.

Curious. That leverage lies in hope of some repayment, yes? But my very fuzzy recollection (surfed a tome on financing WW2 years ago), is the US "loans" were made without informed hope of repayment - it was just politically unacceptable in the US to say that up front. So while there were assorted small post-war repayments (often non-monetary - leases and such), the bulk was written off. Does the size of an unrepayable debt affect negotiations on the size of a token repayment?

Same thing in other industries.

Worked on big telecom billing back in the days. There was the average fish like me whose bills go to a normal flow when unpaid, and the big fish, like government, big companies, etc that not even have to pay their bills (for a time, of course).

Ask the Greeks how that turned out.

(This isn't a political comment, honest! But..) After reading The Art of the Deal, I get the impression this is a lesson Trump took to heart early in life. Always using other people's money to build and do things which, in turn, seems to give him more power than he might otherwise.

If you owe the bank a million, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank.

Instance from 1998: <http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff200/fv00123.htm>

I've heard this as, "If you owe the bank $10,000 you have a creditor; if you owe them $10,000,000 you have a partner."

> "him"

¡Ay, ay, ay!, that's bad use.

So, does this work at the country macro level ?

Particularly relevant for twitter these days.

Too big to fail, too big to bail!

I've heard about a situation here in Toronto where a family had a double mortgage on their overvalued mansion. The bank would never get their money back on a power of sale, so instead of calling in loans, they just extended them more credit, and connected them with an investment manager to help them manage the money the bank was throwing at them.

Wouldn't be nice to fail upward like that?

Perhaps true in 1945, but these days $1M is petty change to a bank. There are lots of people out there with $1M mortgages out there who are definitely at the mercy of their bank.

£1 in 1945 is ~$25M today and even that value doesn't seem high enough for the quote to apply. I wonder where the cutover is? $100M? $1B?