There has been talk in Europe about American hegemony being somehow based upon the use of the dollar in the world. I just don't see that connection at all.

Trust is a skill learned over time so that, like a well-trained athlete, one makes the right moves, usually without much reflection.

The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.

There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.

The major material advantage, financial advantage from having a reserve currency is that between 200 and 300 billion dollar bills, that may be twenty, fifty, hundred dollar bills as well as ones, exist in the world - a lot of them in Russia as you all know I'm sure.

Whether one sees the world as God's creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito.

High kitsch, whatever else may be said of it, cannot be openly dismissed as cheap.