If you or me go to the gas station to fill up our car and it costs us much more than we expected it will zap our discretionary income. We won't have the extra money to buy that washing machine or new winter coat-all big ticket items that are important to economic growth.

I was an economics major in college and every summer after school I would drive my car from California from Claremont men's college at the time to New York. And I worked on Wall Street.

Many kids come out of college they have a credit card and a diploma. They don't know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.

I was criticized at some level within the Republican Party by those who say government should not be in the economic development business at all. My response is that the only country I know that doesn't have an economic development plan is Papa New Guinea.

I can't understand why the Democratic parties seem so hostile to economic growth and business.

Up until the Depression recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.

We have in this country a federal government that increasingly is engaged in trying to determine which business which regions which industries will succeed which will not through a whole range of economic development regional development corporate subsidization programs.

Many people see technology as the problem behind the so-called digital divide. Others see it as the solution. Technology is neither. It must operate in conjunction with business economic political and social system.

Very few if any first-generation black or white or Asian kids will pursue a Ph.D. They'll pursue the professions for economic security. Many will go to law school and/or business school.

What today's business reality makes clear is that brands cannot survive in a society that is failing economically socially ethically and morally.