The good thing is, we have household formation in this country. We have a country where I don't know whether it's a million households a year or more, but good form.

If you owe money, you can't pay them out. You just pay for everything, you do smart things, you eventually get very rich. If you do smart things and use leverage and do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball. [...] And everybody thinks they're going to leave at two minutes to 12.

I mean people -- people don't get -- they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things, you know, and he's getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing -- pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots.

Confidence is key. You're not going to leave your money with me unless you're confident I'm going to give it back to you. And at this point, when treasury bills, seven day treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent, it's not because people want to earn 1/20th of one percent, it's because they trust the fact the treasury will give it back to them next week.

The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world - I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century.

When people talk about cash being king, it's not king if it just sits there and never does anything. There are times when cash buys more than other times, and this is one of the other times when it buys a fair amount more, so we use it.

The commercial paper market, when that dries up, you know, that's just like sucking the blood out of the economic body of the United States.