America's real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.

We already have an annual wealth tax on homes, the major asset of the middle class. It's called the property tax. Why not a small annual tax on the value of stocks and bonds, the major assets of the wealthy?

We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.

To be a skilled politician, you have to be genuine. To really make it work, you have to love people. You have to love the contact, you have to love the energy, you've gotta love inspiring people and getting their adulation in return. You can't separate what's genuine from what is necessary.

The industrial leader of the 20th century was a system-builder. He was a visionary in terms of what could be built; got the capital together; certainly convinced investors that it was possible; and then ran a high-volume production system that would spew out a vast array of almost identical goods and services. They would be changed from time to time; there was research and development, to be sure. But the system was built around production, not innovation.

I knew Hillary Clinton from undergraduate days and was enormously impressed with her. She was a terrific energy and enthusiasm, and a great organizer. And I knew that she was going to have a political future.

I think it's hard to have a brand portal and an economy of trustworthiness in one of them that sloshes over into another. But saying that there will be only a limited number of these giant brand portals doesn't mean a limited number of companies; it doesn't mean that everybody's going to be working for these companies. Quite the opposite. Most of us will be working through much smaller entities that simply use these portals as vehicles for getting and identifying customers.