While government clearly plays the major role in fighting poverty through policies on things such as education, tax, and trade, business creates the wealth that matters.

Growth is what solves most of the big economic and social problems: poverty, government deficits, quality of life, rising healthcare and retirement costs.

I'm totally convinced that the battleground of banking is not the front office. The battleground is the back end.

As a Swiss-Italian who has always worked for foreign banks, there was clearly an element of pride going back to my roots and working for the biggest bank in my country.

We all want prosperity, but not at the expense of liberty. Poverty is not as great a danger to liberty as is wealth, with its corrupting, demoralizing influences. Let us never have a Government at Washington owing its retention to the power of the millionaires rather than to the will of millions.

I am an animal rights campaigner myself, and I donate money and time to those charities, but I think sometimes the problem with animal rights campaigners, including myself, is that we don't think about people's feelings, too.

Britain is a European power. We cannot change our geography. Our involvement in the politics of European cooperation is one of necessity. Our wealth and our security depend upon it.

Japan is already a leader in energy efficiency, and it has a wealth of innovative technologies. We must put this expertise to use creating a model for growth and sustainability that we can share with the world.