Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.

Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.

When I was a kid, the bigger boys would pick on me. So I got an idea that I would make alliances with older boys, like just one or two, who would be my protectors.

More and more, leadership, whether it's profit or nonprofit, is about recruiting and keeping talented people. That's the biggest challenge. Yes, you've got to create systems that will enable people easily to innovate continuously; you've got to be a system-builder. But finding and keeping geeks and shrinks is the biggest challenge. That means leaders have got to be salespeople, they've got to be recruiters, and they've got to be actively able to understand and keep the talent they have. Leadership is courtship. That's what it's becoming.

The managers of the big brands have a very clear responsibility. It's attracting and keeping talented people in order to sustain and build the trustworthiness of that brand. There is no clearer objective in the economy. Your economic success depends on expanding and building your economies of trustworthiness.

The United States is a safe harbor.

I was there in Washington in the `90s. It was pretty bad then. It`s much worse now [in 2015]. And that vicious cycle is you`ve got again big corporations, executives, Wall Street, very wealthy individuals in both parties who are calling the shots.