Now people are worried not about the prospects of buying new things, but about how to pay for the things they bought yesterday, a year ago or years before. It is, as Americans like to say, "a wholly different kind of ball-game".

While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, the differences between the richest and poorest individuals around the globe are huge and likely growing.

Being condemned by fate to perpetual togetherness, we better make that shared fate into our shared, consciously and gladly embraced, destiny.

The more security we have, the less freedom there is; more freedom means less security. You can hardly enough of both at the same time.

If you look back on the history of the 20th century, the 19th century or even to the ancien régime of the 18th, you will see that first people rebelled against the order of the things because of lack of liberty, and demanded more freedom. And when they got more freedom, they got frightened, and they desired more security for a change. After a while, they started complaining, although more secure, they also become more dependent and rule-bound.

Now people are worried not about the prospects of buying new things, but about how to pay for the things they bought yesterday, a year ago or years before. It is, as Americans like to say, "a wholly different kind of ball-game".

I did not and do not think of the solidity-liquidity conundrum as a dichotomy; I view those two conditions as a couple locked, inseparably, in a dialectical bond.