Politics

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The cost of inaction far exceeds the cost of action. Every day we delay comprehensive HIV programs, we're not just counting dollars - we're counting lives.

We are at a crossroads where we can either win this battle against HIV or we can lose it. The science is there, the tools are there, but what we need now is the political will and the resources to finish the job.

Former Executive Director of UNAIDS, leading global HIV/AIDS response efforts

What makes Guantánamo so horrible is the fact that the majority of these men are innocent and have no hope of release in the future. Our government has made no concrete steps to releasing these men.

Guantánamo has created more terrorists than have ever passed through. It is the major recruiting tool used… it inhibits the United States' ability to talk about human rights on a global scale… when you have the UN calling-up the United States on their human rights abuses at Guantánamo it makes it very difficult for the United States to then go to other places in the world and demand that they apply human rights.

It was the brainchild of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfwitz. They picked Guantánamo as they believed it was beyond the reach of all law. Obviously United States law, but also international law and beyond that the Geneva Conventions. It was picked purposely to be a legal black hole where the United States could bring people for interrogation purposes.

The government turned a profit on the financial market aspects of TARP- a profit! People still think these measures cost American taxpayers a huge amount of money and did no good. The facts are exactly the reverse.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board

What the verdict says, to the astonishment of tens of millions of us, is that you can go looking for trouble in Florida, with a gun and a great deal of racial bias, and you can find that trouble, and you can act upon that trouble in a way that leaves a young man dead, and none of it guarantees that you will be convicted of a crime.

Founder of Integral Institute & Author on Evolutionary Spirituality

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me... And there are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.

44th President of the United States (2009-2017)

Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.

Creator of The Wire, acclaimed HBO crime drama series

Many entrepreneurs are deluded about their odds of success, that evidence is very clear. This creates problems… Should a government subsidise entrepreneurs who greatly over-estimate their chances of success?

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research