Gold has no increasing value. And if you're really worried about, say, inflation rising, I would buy Spam. You know, you can eat Spam. You cannot eat gold.

The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.

I believe investors should invest for the long run, so I don't buy and sell. I usually maintain the classic index of global equities, diversified U.S. and global and emerging markets, and when the risk is larger, I diminish the amount in global equities and put more into liquid assets - but very irregularly.

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.

All the risky things that were happening back in ’06 and ‘07 are back again to the same level, if not more. So we are in the beginning of a credit bubble, but just the beginning.

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 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.