If anything, the bailouts actually hindered lending, as banks became more like house pets that grow fat and lazy on two guaranteed meals a day than wild animals that have to go out into the jungle and hunt for opportunities in order to eat.

Being in the building with Sarah Palin that night is a transformative and oddly unsettling experience. It’s a little like having live cave-level access for the ripping-the-heart-out-with-the-bare-hands scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Private equity firms aren't necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead.

For the broadcast business to be successful, viewers need to be not merely interested in our political melodramas, they have to be in an absolute state about them - emotionally invested in the outcome and frightened not to watch what happens next.

America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside.

America's always had a real passion for lunatic movements. That's one of the things we're probably known for around the world, I would imagine.

Everybody I knew, practically, was a journalist when I was a kid - my father, all of his friends. I never wanted to be like those people.