I could have easily been a statistic. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was easy - a little too easy - to get into trouble. Surrounded by poor schools, lack of resources, high unemployment rates, poverty, gangs and more, I watched as many of my peers fell victim to a vicious cycle of diminished opportunities and imprisonment.
One of the causes of the Arab Spring was high unemployment.
It is a fact that, if I single out Germany, our rate of growth is too low and we have very high unemployment.
Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages.
What happened in Queensland is that people are facing high unemployment relative to other states - 5.7 per cent when I last checked.
We will not play with inflation. We are living a delicate moment. President Obama spoke to me today about the high unemployment affecting the United States. In this crisis period, when the developed nations are not recovering, it's prudent to maintain the established inflation target.
My thinking has always been that the worst problem we have with regard to lack of inclusion is the terribly low labor force participation rates and terribly high unemployment rates of young men, especially young men in ethnic minority groups and, in particular, young black men.
This is the first generation to grow up on Thatcher - it's a different ethos. It's money minded, and it's the cult of yourself. Now that's fine, except when it falls down, and you can't achieve your goals - through high unemployment, through the fact that you probably need inherited money to get anywhere.
Think how weird profit margins are: We've got high unemployment and financial crises - and world record profit margins. People think the American market is very cheap. We don't. The market quite incorrectly gives full credit to today's earnings.
The financial crisis and the Great Recession posed the most significant macroeconomic challenges for the United States in a half-century, leaving behind high unemployment and below-target inflation and calling for highly accommodative monetary policies.
