I think it's true that the 1 Percent or the elite are living in a world of, maybe, excessive privilege, and they don't fully realize how much pain and suffering, how much anxiety exists out there.

I am just a normal human being - I am alive! Why is anyone surprised that I am human? Like many New Yorkers, I have a multifaceted life.

But in the financial markets, without proper institutional rules, there's the law of the jungle - because there's greed! There's nothing wrong with greed, per se. It's not that people are more greedy now than they were 20 years ago. But greed has to be tempered, first, by fear of losses. So if you bail people out, there's less fear. And second, b prudential regulation and supervision to avoid certain excesses.

If we didn't have greed, market economies wouldn't be as innovative as they are. But in my view, greed has to be contained by the fear of losses, so there has to be a system where, if you take too much risk, you go into bankruptcy. You don't systematically bail out people who take excessive risks.

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise.

I think investing in a good education has been key for me, although the investment was more in time than money.

Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers. This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.