Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues.

America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial.

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.

In the old days, when you took out a mortgage, it was probably through a local bank or a credit union, and whoever gave you your loan held on to it for life. If you lost your job or got too sick to work and suddenly had trouble making your payments, you could call a human being and work things out.

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

'Prop trading' is just a fancy term for banks gambling in the market for their own profit.

What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.