The sad fact is that the same terrorist scenarios if they occurred in five different States there could be five different sets of responses to the American people. We need at a minimum a level of coordination on communicating threats to the public.

Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios and the long legislative battles over health care reform financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible.

People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.

My time at Shell was a most valuable experience because it taught me to look at the world in a long-term way. Shell takes a 20-year view on events and plans for different scenarios. It makes you see the world as a kind of large matrix.

We have some worse scenarios for which we need to prepare as companies. For the moment we're planning for the worst and the worst is now and the car market is down more than 15 percent in France. There is so much uncertainty.