The Iranians can ramp this up or back as they're pressed. And thus far, they have shown every inclination to do precisely that.

Political scientists don't work at banks which is a problem. As political issues become more important for the markets, analysts at banks are asked all sorts of questions they don't have the ability to answer. And if you're getting paid to answer questions as analysts at banks are you never want to be in the position of saying you don't know.

An emerging market is a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the market.

The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime's safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins.

Everything today is "transient." Technology and its ability to empower actors large and small evolve so quickly that we have to get used to living in a world that exists in a more or less constant state of flux.

In China, the state controls the corporations, whereas in the United States, the corporations control the state.

Climate is a global issue. Coal is still the energy that is being used more than anything else to make electricity. The United States is using less as we're turning more to gas. But, around the world, that's what they're using.

Deeper state intervention in an economy means that bureaucratic waste, inefficiency and corruption are more likely to hold back growth.

There is too large a divergence at the moment in the interests and values of the world's most powerful states.

Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.