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If you don't have a functioning financial system the world economy won't be revived. All the major economies have their responsibility to assist at a pace which is required to clean up the balance sheet of the banking system and to ensure that credit flows are resumed.

We have not recovered all that we lost in the Bush recession. That's why we need to continue to move forward.

Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism.

If the financial system collapses, it's really, really hard to put it back together again.

Discussions of the economy, especially during times of crisis, are often framed in terms of lessons we supposedly learned during the Depression of the 1930s. If we are not to endure terrible times like those again, we are told, we must support whatever form of state intervention is currently being peddled.

When everything is going well, the role of the state in the economy should be limited. When we are in a crisis, it's different.

If you want to thrive in today's economy, you must challenge the status quo and get the financial education necessary to succeed.

There is a basic lesson on financial crises that governments tend to wait too long, underestimate the risks, want to do too little. And it ultimately gets away from them, and they end up spending more money, causing much more damage to the economy.

I didn't end up going bankrupt... I made some great investments and I held on to my money, which also enables me to have the freedom to do what I want now. But it's not about finances. No matter what, it's about keeping it real.

However, the economics of our business continued to deteriorate. We barely escaped bankruptcy a year ago, and in the aftermath of that escape we had to make some even tougher decisions.