This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets. Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.

Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.

You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.

We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.

If we allow terrorism to undermine our freedom of action, we could reverse at least part of the palpable gains achieved by postwar globalization. It is incumbent upon us not to allow that to happen.

It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.

I've always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world.