today

When I was born in 1970 with a rare genetic disorder called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SED), medical science wasn't what it is today and my mum and dad were treated terribly by the medical profession.

Today the biggest problem in caring for those with AIDS is no longer mainly a medical or scientific problem. The crisis is access to affordable drugs.

Today, all patients accepted for treatment at St. Jude's are treated without regard for the family's ability to pay. Everything beyond what is covered by insurance is taken care of, and for those without insurance, all of the medical costs are absorbed by the hospital.

Today, medical devices such as catheters and stethoscopes use silver, and every hospital in the western world uses silver sulfadiazine to prevent infections.

Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs, not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.

In the old days we were the challenger brand competing against the big banks, but today I go round the world and I sit with governors of central banks and finance ministers and, in some cases, prime ministers. They all know Travelex. We are regarded as the establishment - the world's largest retailer of foreign currency.

As you know, Social Security functions under the premise that today's workers will help finance benefits for retirees and that these workers will then be supported by the next generation of workers paying into the same system.

It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.

We'll have a public power authority, which will also have the ability to build power or finance power. And more importantly, we'll have more power than our economy provides. All of that will give us leverage we don't have today.

I know how to finance something. It's easier today because, as you're more successful, everybody wants to do deals with you. But even in the beginning, when I took Landry's public, I owned 100 percent of it. I never had investors or anything. I was just always able to find a way to do it.

The massive debt we have racked up to finance our wasteful government is pulling down growth today. Gross debt over 90 percent of GDP weakens growth now. Not tomorrow - now.

Small- and medium-sized businesses need access to a diverse range of finance options, including non-bank lending. These new forms of finance are still small in scale today but they should, over time, bring additional choice and greater competition to the lending market.

Where are the jobs going to come from? Small business, manufacturing and clean energy. Where's the money to finance them? The banks and the corporations in America today have lots of money that they can invest right now.

Argentina has decided to take its place in the global landscape. We need important companies of the world to finance and construct roads, ports, waterways, energy, trains. We're a huge country that only depends on trucks today. It's impossible.

Today, if you look at financial systems around the globe, more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people, more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame.

Today, the world is so awash in sugar - it is such a staple of the modern diet, associated with all that is cheap and unhealthy - that it's hard to believe things were once exactly the opposite. The West Indies were colonized in a world where sugar was seen as a scarce, luxurious, and profoundly health-giving substance.

Even today with the public's growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.

And I believe that the best buy in public health today must be a combination of regular physical exercise and a healthy diet.