A Facebook message will never be able to replace face-to-face interaction.

Facebook and other social networking sites are bringing together spheres that used to be separate. People no longer have private and public lives; the line between the two is becoming blurred.

For more than 3,000 years, China and India accounted for half of the world's economic output. But then the Industrial Revolution gave North America and Europe 150 golden years. If you take the long-term perspective, our economic dominance has been more of an exception than the rule.

Debt is not intrinsically bad. But I make clear to my children that they should only borrow as much as they will be able to pay back.

Everything that individuals ever say or write can be used against them at a later point.

The heads of leading American universities say that if they selected applicants based on grades alone, their student bodies would be 100 percent Asian.

Enormous forces are affecting the world, and we can't possibly overestimate their importance. These include demographic developments, climate change, digitalization and the rise of Asia. And then there's the most important one: the end of a life lived on credit. We must finally free ourselves from debt.