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Folks, you're the reason that the automobile industry is back. Whether it was the wage freezes, the plant closures, folks, you sacrificed to keep your companies open. Because of your productivity, the combined auto companies have committed to invest another $23 billion in expansion in America.

I predicted in 1950 that in five years, manufacturers the world over would be screaming for protection. It took only four years.

And the buying of new machinery meant not only the possibility of production, but even the new technology, 'cos as I mentioned before, we were back of seven, eight years.

The problem with the auto industry is layered upon the lack of consumer confidence. People are not buying cars. I don't care whether they're or American cars, or international cars.

I see a future where American companies lead the world in the production of hybrid-plug in cars and electric vehicles.

Eighty percent of what everyone's talking about never happens. I don't mean in terms of product development that's happening right now, I'm talking about the far-flung visions of the future.

Viewed from a distance, or through the eye of the All-Knowing CEO of the Universe, the crash of 2008 followed the usual pattern. A long-lived boom driven by cheap credit, going back as far as 1982 (though subject to interruptions in the mid-1980s and 1990s, and in 2001), came to grief because of a rise in the cost of borrowing money.

Everything has a trend to it; I don't care if it's appliances or engines. I always ask, 'What has a company done in the past five years that somebody's noticed?'

I expect to see a lot of household appliances on the Net by 2010, as well as autos and other mobile devices.

After a major loss of dynamism in the 1960s, productivity growth rates began dropping in most countries, falling by half in the U.S. in the 1970s and more or less ceasing altogether in France, Germany and Britain in the late 1990s.