ROGER ALTMAN

We live in an era where the global capital markets are the super power in the world, and when they move against you as they've moved against Russia, as we've all seen in the ruble, there's nothing that can stop that.

Many Russia experts note the deep and sad capacity of the Russian people for suffering.

Russia's oil fields are mature and require capital and Western technology even to keep production flat.

Housing works like a trampoline. When it is pushed down far enough and long enough, it will eventually snap upward very powerfully.

China is beginning to act more like a world citizen. We need China to be more active on the world stage. For example, we should want China to be a bigger participant and a bigger shareholder in the IMF. We should want it to be an even more active participant in the G8 and G20.

The Fed is the major U.S. firefighter. It's not the Treasury. It's not the Congress. We certainly saw that vividly in 2008.

Safer cities generally mean stronger urban economies.

Reasonable mergers generate substantial synergies, so that provides for earnings and cash-flow growth even if it doesn't provide for revenue growth, and I think that's a big driver.

The financial and economic crash of 2008, the worst in over 75 years, is a major geopolitical setback for the United States and Europe.

When Xi Jinping came to power, there were a series of hints that market-based capitalism would be allowed to move forward under his leadership. At the first real threat, they've fallen over themselves to impose government control.

There are a lot of anachronisms in Washington, but the need to periodically raise the debt limit by Congressional vote is certainly one of them.

In September 2008, the overleveraged and undermanaged U.S. banking system suffered a terrifying collapse. And that, in turn, nearly took the whole country down.

Cheap natural gas is a big stimulus to petrochemical production and a meaningful one for all U.S. manufacturing.

The United States is much further along because its financial crisis struck three years before Europe's, in 2008, causing headwinds that have pressured it ever since.

Mergers generate substantial synergies.

The 2008 economic crisis and Great Recession forced widespread restructuring throughout the U.S. economy - not unlike a company gritting its teeth through a lifesaving bankruptcy.

The more Mr. Putin extends the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the more the financial markets will ratchet up their own pressure on Russia.

The long-standing wisdom that everyone wins in a single world market has been undermined. Global trade, capital flows, and immigration are declining.

Within a few months in 2008, household finances were crushed as asset values fell, millions of jobs were lost, countless credit cards were canceled, and thousands of homes were foreclosed on.

I think Obamacare, for all its controversy, is actually working.

The 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed have had devastating effects on the U.S. economy and millions of American lives. But the U.S. economy will emerge from its trauma stronger and widely restructured.

If a lending institution is faced with bids for a package of toxic assets that are less than the carrying value of those assets, the sale of those assets would trigger a further loss and reduce the underlying capital of the institution.

In this age, if the currency of a major nation collapses, or its access to borrowing ends, it just can't function.

The idea that America, whose oil production has been declining for the past 40 years, is now on track to become the world's biggest producer by 2015 is still hard to grasp.

Too many companies are just being big for the sheer sake of it. Too many CEOs thinking bigger is better.