A Quote by Ambrose Bierce
OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.
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Most people don't know this, but if you settle a debt for less than the amount you owed, you are potentially responsible for taxes on the forgiven debt. Look at it this way: You received goods and services for the full amount of debt, but you're only paying for a portion of it - sometimes less than 50%. Anything more than $600 is generally considered taxable, but the IRS will sometimes waive the tax if you can prove that your assets were less than your liabilities when the debt was settled.
The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about.
It would be a very odd chancellor of any UK government that insisted on a course of action that cost their own businesses hundreds of millions of pounds, that blew a massive hole in their balance of payments and, because assets and liabilities go hand in hand, would potentially leave the rest of the UK shouldering the entirety of UK debt.
An example of good debt is the debt on the apartment houses I own. That debt is good only as long as there are tenants to pay my mortgages. If tenants stop paying their rent, my good debt turns into bad debt.
Rich people acquire assets. The poor and middle class acquire liabilities that they think are assets.
Who owns the assets of our Nation? Increasingly, foreign interests own our assets, and we owe them money. No wonder people think our country is headed in the wrong direction. It is.
Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.
Liabilities are just assets in hiding.
Whatever we owe, it is our part to find where to pay it, and to do it without asking, too; for whether the creditor be good or bad, the debt is still the same.
The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burthensome, still paying, still to owe; Forgetful what from him I still receivd, And understood not that a grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and dischargd; what burden then?
Value investors will not invest in businesses that they cannot readily understand or ones they find excessively risky. Hence few value investors will own the shares of technology companies. Many also shun commercial banks, which they consider to have unanalyzable assets, as well as property and casualty insurance companies, which have both unanalyzable assets and liabilities.
Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.
If I sold all my liabilities, I wouldn't own anything. My wife's a liability, my kids are liabilities, and I haven't sold them.
Good debt accrues assets that generate positive returns and externalities.
The great increase in longevity has produced a surge in the desire to accumulate assets for retirement. It has outpaced the ability of the private sector to produce assets, so we need a larger government debt.
For society to function some kind of reasonable balance has to be stuck between the competing interests of creditors and debtors. Although the mandate of the Bank of Canada was to maintain a delicate balance between encouraging growth and fighting inflation, the Bank opted to focus exclusively on fighting inflation. In doing so it came down heavily in favour of those with financial assets to protect, and against those whose primary need was employment.
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