Politics

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

Despite huge and on-going technological advances in electronic transactions technologies, it has remained surprisingly durable, even if its major uses seem to be buried in the world underground and illegal economy.

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

There is nothing, however, in standard theories of money that requires transactions to be anonymous from tax- or law-enforcement authorities. And yet there is a significant body of evidence that a large percentage of currency in most countries, generally well over 50%, is used precisely to hide transactions.

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

Paying a negative interest rate on currency, or on electronic reserves at the central bank, may seem barbaric to some... But it is arguably no more barbaric than inflation, which similarly reduces the real purchasing power of currency.

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

The complexity of the topic combined with significant political and social blindness towards it, has led to disability becoming one of the most significant un-addressed issues of modern time.

Disability Rights Activist & Founder of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People

Disability – rather than being something looked upon as a 'condition', is really a phenomenon that occurs at a complex intersection between our humanity, policy, society, culture and the environment.

Disability Rights Activist & Founder of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People

Loose monetary policy today may be setting up the conditions for a jobless recovery in the future. Even today, the outlines of such a situation are already visible. The knowledge that weaker demand for labour lies ahead affects consumption demand directly and indirectly, as it puts further downward pressure on wages.

Nobel Prize-Winning Economist & Critic of Globalization