John W. Snow

We must start with the reality that corporations cannot guarantee anyone a lifetime job any more than corporations have a guarantee of immortality.

The deficit - the U.S. knows our deficit is too large. We are committed to bringing it down. We are bringing it down. The deficit came in for fiscal year '05 at considerably below where it was the prior year.

We have the deepest and most liquid capital markets in the world.

Well, I make a practice of not commenting on the role of the relative exchange value of our currency.

And we have abundant natural energy resources in the country. We haven't been taking adequate advantage of them, and we can burn coal in a clean way; we could improve the grid.

Well, the U.S. is running a current account deficit; we are creating lots of investment opportunities in the United States that exceed our own domestic savings rates, so the issue here is to encourage higher savings rates in the United States.

We have to keep our eye on inflation, but so far inflation remains reasonably in check on the global stage.

We have a serious structural deficit problem. And it needs to be addressed. The president is trying to address it through reforms of Social Security, but the problem is there with other entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Well, there's no doubt about the fact that, that higher energy prices lead to greater conservation, greater energy efficiency, and they also, of course, play a useful role on the supply side.

Social Security represents an $11 trillion unfunded obligation. And when I say unfunded obligation, I mean we have to come up with $11 trillion at some point to make the system whole.

We promote domestic savings by also things like the personal accounts associated with the president's Social Security initiative, which over time would generate more savings.

Telecom is a dramatic success in India and our view is, respecting the political process, and respecting the fact that these are sovereign decisions, is that, approaching India as a friend.