The lower interest rates fueled housing and consumption booms in countries such as Spain and Ireland. At the same time, Germany, struggling with the burdens of reunification, tightened its belt and became more competitive. All this led to a wide divergence in economic performance. Europe became divided into creditor and debtor countries.

Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.

The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.

As a society we can't live without moral considerations. We do have to protect the public good. And markets are not designed to do that, so we need a political process.

Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.

The assumption of perfect knowledge is very far from reality ... a lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional.

There is no point in being confident and having a small position.