I think globalization actually maintains and fosters various elements of national and cultural identities. I don't think everything is being homogenized. If anything, your food, your culture, and your ethnicity might become part of the globalized world, and thus absorbed by other countries.

I'm a rock star among geeks, wonks, and nerds.

Having spent 10 years studying emerging markets, I know that you have patterns repeated over and over again. A bubble is like a fire which needs oxygen to continue... when you see there is no oxygen, things change.

We're essentially continuing a system where profits are privatized and...losses socialized.

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.

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.

I am not going to say I told you so, but I did.