My friends all say I’m going to be Secretary of State, [but] I don’t see how that would be much different from the job I have now

One of the things that has been very difficult in Libya is the sense of uncertainty - the sense that they haven't actually finished the revolution, that there was still a great deal of uncertainty. That uncertainty has made Libya harder for business in terms of oil and other things as well.

The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.

The Berlin Wall wasn't the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also fell.

You know, when the cost of capital goes down, when credit becomes cheap, people start taking greater and greater risks.

What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors.