What we collectively decide about how to bail out our economy, how to pull our economy out of a ditch and what rules we put in place to make sure this problem does not happen again, will shape our country for the next 50 years. This is it.

As a Democrat, one of the things that frustrates me the most is there are a lot of times we just don't get in the fight. We ask pretty please if we can have things or we make the argument for why it is the best thing to do, and then wait patiently for the other side to agree to come along. We negotiate. We start our opening position by negotiating.

I don't like credit cards. They make overspending very easy. They can make life a lot more complex and stressful.

My advice is to treat [credit cards] like what they are: little plastic grenades that must be handled very carefully.

The financial services industry has seemed to treat the crisis like a little rainfall - inconvenient, but no significant changes needed. The real question moving forward is how the industry will respond to Wall Street reform and growing public anger.

When you talk about Social Security, it's not just enough to say, we're looking at you, this really matters. It's the fact that a million Americans think it matters. Oh, wait, it's 2 million Americans think it matters. No, it's 4 million Americans. It's 6 million, wait, it's 10 million, it's 50 million Americans who care about this. That's how we're going to make change.

It's a simple idea: We all do better when we work together and invest in our future.