“Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.”

“Profits in business always depend on the rate of interest: the higher the interest, the higher the rate of profit required.”

“Rarely in modern times has there been such a revolution in commercial sentiment as occurred in 2008, or such a display in government and business of panic and helplessness.”

“For all their current prestige, Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories, however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.”

“The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”

“Were there peace and justice in the Middle East, the Arabs would no more need their tinhorn dictators than they would their corpulent princes.”