David Malpass

While Washington pays lip service to the challenges facing small businesses, it repeatedly chooses its own expansion over results. In effect, government has become a huge silent partner in all businesses, often taking a majority of the profits and forcing many unprofitable business decisions without the risk that it will be fired.

The assumption that Washington could and would resolve Lehman Brothers without a bankruptcy, as it had Bear Stearns, was the single biggest mistake in the series of mistakes in 2007 and 2008 that led to the financial panic and the ensuing epidemic of job losses.

Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.