Until the nineteen-seventies, Western countries paid little attention to corruption overseas, and bribery was seen as an unpleasant but necessary part of doing business there. In some European countries, businesses were even allowed to deduct bribes as an expense.

Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting.

Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.

What an economy really wants, after all, is not more investment per se but better investment. It wants capital to flow to companies that will create value - not in the form of a rising stock price but in the form of more goods for less cost, more jobs, and rising wages - by enhancing productivity.

I think people don't understand compound interest because typically no one ever explains it to them and the level of financial literacy in the US is very low.

There are certainly valid reasons for taking a company private, and it's also possible that C.E.O.s perform better when monitored by a small number of owners in a private company rather than by the dispersed and often uninterested shareholders of a public corporation.

Most corporate name changes are the result of mergers and acquisitions. But these tend to be unimaginative.