Andrew Ross Sorkin

As a journalist, a big part of what you do is search for drama and conflict. And a lot of the backstory with 'Billions' is grounded in my journalistic background.

In the age of activism that is clearly not going away, it would seem that some form of engagement from directors with shareholders - rather than directors simply taking their cues from management - would go a long way toward helping boards work on behalf of all shareholders rather just the most vocal.

Tiptoeing on a tightrope past insider trading laws may be deft and clever, but it doesn't make it right.

Bringing back something akin to Glass-Steagall would clearly help limit risk in the system. And that's a very good and worthy goal. Letting banks sell securities and insurance products and services allowed them to grow too big too fast and fueled a culture that put profit and pay over prudence.

I would say that my whole career is effectively trying to be a storyteller within the context of financial news.

As a child, I always enjoyed - my parents used to have these little cocktail parties - and I always loved trying to get the adults to tell me things they weren't supposed to say. And in many ways, that's what my job is today; it's getting people to tell me things that they probably are otherwise not supposed to say.

In September 2008 - as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and AIG, the world's biggest insurance company, accepted a federal bailout - Senator John McCain of Arizona, in what was widely viewed as a political move, suspended his presidential campaign and called on Obama to rush back to Washington for a bipartisan meeting at the White House.

The moment a large investor doesn't believe a government will pay back its debt when it says it will, a crisis of confidence could develop. Investors have scant patience for the years of good governance - politically fraught fiscal restructuring, austerity and debt rescheduling - it takes to defuse a sovereign-debt crisis.

Let's start with a basic question: Do we, as a country, want our most highly qualified employees from the private sector to pursue public service? The answer, I would imagine, should be yes.

Unfortunately, I think it's very difficult to separate policy from politics. In a perfect world, in some instances, you probably would want to. In other instances, you'd probably say that the political element is important because it should, in a perfect world, match what the stakeholders need or want, or what the public is after.

The greatest economic power might in fact remain in the hands of the Federal Reserve. Economists credit the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates at historic lows with helping to pump up the economy and bring unemployment down.

Hank Paulson, obviously, had spent his career on Wall Street, had a deep knowledge of the Street, and also was a very forceful personality, had a very good relationship with the president, and was in a very different place, for example, than Ben Bernanke, who is an academic, quiet guy: spent most of his time thinking about monetary policy.