Knowledge about the economy ideas about capitalism and government the future of the world and geopolitics were things I was never really interested in.

The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism economic inequality is real and growing.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

And if you look at the reality in the United States where you have more than 40 million people below the poverty line and 42 million on food stamps and then you look at poverty around the world clearly the way we're running the engine of capitalism is not serving us well.

Sharia has become an increasingly significant force in American capitalism thanks to the embrace by Wall Street and the U.S. government of so-called Sharia-Compliant Finance. Indeed this country's taxpayers now own the largest purveyor of sharia-compliant insurance products in the world: AIG.

Under capitalism each individual engages in economic planning.

Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's just the opposite.

It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family.

In the Europe which was created by the Second World War divided into two blocks each in need of a revolution that would end the abuses and injustices of capitalism and the privileges of a bureaucratic caste collective faith does not exist.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory if not practice the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or at least we used to.