Wisdom in fragments

The consumer is far better educated today than he ever was. Consumers don't need to rely on intermediaries to tell them what is good or bad- people are social, they share information with friends and strangers, and go to a broader community for help and assistance.

Travel is a market that will always do well, in the absence of one of two factors. Firstly… if the global economy goes soft- since travel is a discretionary spend- it will go soft faster than the rest of the economy.

The industry is so big that it's difficult to give a general read of its state. It's a bit like saying 'what's the state of the global banking industry?' You could do a broad-brush and say that the banking industry is full of corrupt individuals intent on defrauding the world, or you could say that in some markets banking is doing very well- and in others it's doing terribly.

There's definitely a sense that regulators don't understand how firms operate and the practicalities of what they do- and hence that regulations won't help resolve the issues, such as governance issues, that are there.

You can't stop risks completely, that's the whole point of a free market.

Following the crisis, nobody actually pinpointed its cause and hence where the deficiencies were. There were knee-jerk reactions to say hedge-funds caused it with leverage, they're bad and must be regulated…. but nobody looked at the fact that the market created a load of products that nobody understood, and then failed to manage them properly.

The key danger is that regulators try to remove all the risk from the marketplace- this cannot be the case. There has to be risk in all these products, and if they try to remove them too much, they'll create vanilla products that simply cannot deliver.

The people in the advanced countries now face a choice: we can express justified horror, or we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes. If we refuse to do the latter, we will be contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead.

Renowned Linguist & Political Activist, Critic of US Foreign Policy

I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.

U.S. Representative from Texas; known for controversial statements

We even regulate toy guns, by requiring orange tips — but lawmakers don't have the gumption to stand up to National Rifle Association extremists and regulate real guns as carefully as we do toys.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist & New York Times Columnist

Since citizens' militias are anachronistic, gun owners now use the second amendment merely to defend individual gun ownership, as if that somehow offers protection against tyranny. A reckless, right-wing Supreme Court has agreed with them. As a result, gun ownership has become perversely linked to freedom in the vast gun-owning American sub-culture. But, instead of protection of freedom, Americans nowadays are getting massive bloodshed and fear.

Economist & Director of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

Transparency is paramount. We have to make sure that we have sufficient transparency in the investments we are making, to be able to manage risk for our clients.

Climate scientist and energy systems researcher at University of Manchester

A corporate bond is ultimate a long-term loan structured in the form of a bond. Corporate entities are not default-remote and are not guaranteed to pay-back their debts.

Climate scientist and energy systems researcher at University of Manchester

Sovereign debt is reasonably unique in that there are no underlying assets one can claim unlike corporate bonds.

Climate scientist and energy systems researcher at University of Manchester

Investors who previously thought that sovereigns were a quasi-risk-free asset have been challenged in that respect. Domestic local-currency sovereign debt is certainly not risk-free. It very much depends on the willingness and ability of the sovereign to pay-back its debt!

Climate scientist and energy systems researcher at University of Manchester

Before you think about the alpha, you have to think about the client's beta.

Climate scientist and energy systems researcher at University of Manchester