I wish to be focused on kind of the business stuff I'm doing, how do I contribute to our economic progress, how do I help create a future for American industry, American middle class, these kind of things. Those things actually really matter to me.

People who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don't.

One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.

Because in our boom times, everything is growing, usually, you know, the kind of things that come to mind are Wild, Wild, West, or land grabs, you know, these sorts of things, in order to make something, you know, kind of to grow into the future and to get all the growth that you need to have. So you tend to hire a lot because you're running fast to the future.

Part of the reason we like democracy is it's the portfolio of decades, which is to say you don't also get the disastrous dictator who completely destroys a society, engages you in wars and so forth.

The first set of questions to ask yourself when you're doing cost cutting is relatively straightforward, which is, you know, can you use the necessity of cost cutting as an opportunity to do pruning or trimming for projects that aren't being as successful? But, you know, frequently those are the easy ones. I mean, there's always some kind of social costs internal to the company, but that's the easy way of looking at the future.

One of the really key things to look at in terms of crafting strategy when you're in an economic crises is how do you maximize essentially your liquidity position? Your ability to both take kind of profits and revenues and business and then convert that into a stronger lead. And so those companies that can do that can actually, you know, get a march on their competitors.