Companies, like people, don't much like to change.

In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled.

The paradox of Steve Jobs's career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers - he was famously dismissive of market research - yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted.

The world's central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is real.

Companies often become victims of their own mythologies.

I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.