Americans reading the paper, listening to the news every single day, and all you hear is things are getting worse and worse. And that has a psychological effect on consumer confidence. That's what consumer confidence is.

I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.

I do think - as self-serving as it sounds - that I was the right person, given the very, very strong headwind we had from the economy and our own issues, to come back and rewrite the future of the company.

Europe has always represented a major strategic opportunity to achieve our goal of creating and building an enduring global brand.

To be an enduring, great company, you have to build a mechanism for preventing or solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader.

Authentic brands don't emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does.

The response to the Starbucks brand has been phenomenal in our international markets.