I don't think that hedge funds are bad per se. I think they're just one more financial tool. And in that sense, they're useful.

I promised to bring change to Washington. The underlying reason for the economic mess we're in has been building for years. It's a fundamental imbalance in which the top 1 percent now gets almost a quarter of all national income. We haven't seen income and wealth this concentrated since the late nineteen twenties, and we all know what happened then - the Great Depression. We'll never really get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession until we fix this basic problem.

I can say to the German people that the United States has been good for Germany. Has looked out for Germany. Has provided security for Germany. Has helped rebuilt Germany. And unify Germany.

We don't make determinations about who we love. And that's why I think that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.

I support ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country. I believe strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away and passing laws that extend equal rights to gay couples. I've required all agencies in the federal government to extend as many federal benefits as possible to LGBT families as the current law allows. And I've called on Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and to pass the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act.

I'll remember the view out this window [from Oval Cabinet], because this is where we had our - the playground that we put in when Malia and Sasha came in. Being able every once in awhile to look out the window and see your daughters during the summer, swinging on that swing set, that made the presidency a little bit sweeter.

The amount of information, the amount of incoming that any administration has to deal with today and respond to much more rapidly than ever before, that makes it different.