“Confidence, capital, and credit fuel entrepreneurship and economic exp...” — Elaine Chao Quote

Confidence, capital, and credit fuel entrepreneurship and economic expansion.

When my mother, sisters and I arrived on the shores of America when I was 8 years old, the boat on which we came, a freighter, passed the Statue of Liberty.

Though the National Bureau of Economic Research deemed the recession to have ended in June 2009, to most Americans, that conclusion seems not to square with reality.

Perhaps the original layaway angel knew from experience, or simply deduced, that people resorting to the old-fashioned installment method of layaway may be struggling financially.

My parents were very, very strict parents, and they were not used to this new, you know, American custom of letting your children sleep in someone else's house.

In the early 1990s, when a lot of the developing world opened up to international capital flows... they ended up in very good long-term projects, but projects that weren't going to pay off for five or 10 or 20 years.

I think each person, if you're a CEO, the most important thing is to have - to me, is to pick people around you that aren't like you, that complement you. Because you want to build a puzzle; you don't want to stack Chiclets up and have everyone be the same. And so I believe in diversity with a capital D.

Insurance and funding traditionally drive capital investment. But in a world based on access, not ownership, the duration, value, cost and extent of financial services is distinctly different.

We have concentrated wealth and capital to such a degree that the vast majority of us don't have the discretionary dollars to make our economy go and grow.