Debt
Asset backed debt has a commodity value equal to the price of the collateral; a loan backed by a house has a commodity value equal to the free market price of the house. Non-collateralized debt, on the other hand, does not have a commodity value; it is valuable only insofar as it is repaid.
Read more about this topic: Commodity Value
Famous quotes containing the word debt:
“Man’s pity for himself, or for his son,
Always premising that said son at college
Has not contracted much more debt than knowledge.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Live within your means, never be in debt, and by husbanding your money you can always lay it out well. But when you get in debt you become a slave. Therefore I say to you never involve yourself in debt, and become no man’s surety. If your friend is in distress, aid him if you have the means to spare. If he fails to be able to return it, it is only so much lost.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love’s world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)