From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We can see, therefore, that sovereign debt has a systemically important role in the stability of the global economy, the economies of individual states and even the very peace of a country. To be able to then treat this as a market instrument- while appropriate at a time when capital flows were gentile and considered- is clearly not when we can write $2 trillion or more from an entire economy in a matter of seconds.
Changing the mood has an economic impact superior to many measures because companies and families, when they have more confidence, they act differently. Uncertainty and fear are enemies of economic growth.
You only get to really redesign markets root and branch when they are failing so dramatically that everyone acknowledges it. Markets are a little like language. It's hard to change the spelling of certain words in the English language, even though those spellings are dysfunctional.
We're moving towards a world of increasing abundance. The poorest and wealthiest can access the same information because of Google; the same information Larry Page has! That same democratisation and demonetisation will occur in other critically important areas of our life.
It's only the latest iteration of post-1980s capitalism which has disconnected us so much from the common good, our collective interest in care and compassion. Before that, capitalism wasn't really like that – and if you think about the style of capitalism we observe in continental Europe and Asia – there's been a much higher emphasis on community.
The only value that government paper provides you at this point is, basically, the fact that if everything goes to 'hell in a handbasket' that you have some assets of value.
We cannot focus only on the material aspects of poverty- we must address the poverty of spirit that's present in every one of our broken institutions: health systems, economic systems, criminal justice systems, and food systems. If we are going to solve the toughest problems we face as a world right now, we're going to need new operating principles that are compatible with a deeply interconnected world.
With 650 million global fans, MMA has the third biggest worldwide fanbase (after soccer and basketball). However, those MMA fans are very under-served and very under-monetized.
As far as I'm concerned any business that's up and running within an hour of having mortar [attacks shows remarkable resilience].
China for example, aims to increase their buying by 400,000 barrels a day in the last quarter of 2012, and will be adding over 750,000 barrels of new refining capacity. That economic engine is still turning.
What was broken in journalism was not a lack of demand for good stories nor a lack of journalists or the format of stories and distribution – the thing that was broken was the business model.
I've been doing this a long time and have very rarely seen a company with sustainable competitive advantage like Amazon has.