My dad grew up in Nicaragua in his teenage years, then immigrated to the United States.

I was the third parent, growing up, and it did make me a very overly responsible adult.

I still remember, at the age of 12, learning that segregation had been permitted only a couple of decades before I was born and that a woman's right to vote was not even a century old. But it was great Americans who stood up, some dying for the cause, to make our country better.

Detroit can become a national model for urban revitalization, but to do so, it must break free from past development models.

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012.

We have never heard of laundering in Macau; money laundering is unheard of. Mind you, my casino, every bit of money - someone says Stanley Ho, you issue me a check of so much money - we don't give that easy.

When I got started in New York, it wasn't like it is now. If you were different from Miles and Dizzy, it was very difficult to make gigs and make money with your own style.

I think that Obama's failure to reestablish the rule of law in money matters is the most damaging thing that he's done - and perhaps the most damaging thing that has happened in American politics in my lifetime. Because once the rule of law is absent in money matters, then anything really goes in politics.