It's critical to level the playing field, to make prices and risks clear up front, so when someone signs on for a student loan or a mortgage or a credit card, they know the tricks and traps hidden in the fine print. That's why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been working on a new financial aid shopping sheet. A shorter, two-page credit card agreement, a simpler mortgage disclosure form. All those are aimed toward helping people understand the basic bargain.

People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they're right. The system is rigged.

I think the best way it happens is if parents say, this is important for educating my child.

Our number one responsibility is to protect Americans from terrorism, that’s our job, so being tough on terrorism is enormously important.

It's powerfully important that our kids get an education in personal finance.

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.

Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people.