Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.

Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes.

Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don't think there is any need for a law against fraud.

If I've made myself clear, I've misspoken.

Now, I only play very occasionally, and in fact, more piano than clarinet or sax.

[Republicans] swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.

We may be in a rapidly evolving international financial system with all the bells and whistles of the so-called new economy. But the old-economy rules of prudence are as formidable as ever. We violate them at our own peril.