Donald R. Keough, 82, is former president of the Coca-Cola Company and now chairman of Allen and Company the New York investment bank. He is the best selling author of "The Ten Commandments of Business Failure." He is also one of the most inspirational figures in American business, a close confidante of Warren Buffett who says he only knows of two businessmen, Keough and Jack Welch of GE, who should have run for president. Keough was the keynote speaker at our sister publication Irish America's Business 100 at the Plaza Hotel last week. His remarks are worth repeating. "We'll find our way out of this, and in a way it's good for us because it lets us reset our base and revalue what life is really about. You know, I'm very proud of this country and of its people. Whatever the politics each of us have, yours or mine, we've just participated in a long and historic election with a historic outcome. We have a gracious loser, we have a gracious winner, we have a gracious sitting president, and an orderly transition that's happening after a long and tough campaign. Since the Revolutionary War, since the Continental Congress, we've continued to enlarge and enhance the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. It hasn't been easy or swift, but a remarkable constitution made better with amendments, and finally 75 years later, it dealt with slavery, which took a vicious Civil War and a courageous president. And then we had to struggle for decades about the right of women to vote, and then we participated in two wars we didn't start to protect the freedom of the world. And then we had an election in 1960 to determine whether religion would be a test for the presidency and we the people decided no. But then after a long fight to civil rights victory and then on and on until November 4, 2008 when a man of color was elected president of the United States. Listen to me. This would happen nowhere else in the developed world, and we should be darn proud of it. You know, this is a great nation. And it's going to, believe me, it's going to prove its greatness again through this current economic crisis, just as it has, ladies and gentlemen, for decade after decade over the last 230 years. Let me say this. With our global population of 6.5 billion people, in the last decade one billion people have moved into the fringes of the middle class. For the first time in history this has happened in China, in India, in Brazil and in other countries in the world. And I know that in the next 10 years, the world will be better. And 20 years from now, listen, 20 years from now, another two billion people will begin to find their way into the middle class. Once you're there, you have something to protect and save. At the turn of the century, the 20th century, the average male could live until he was in his early 50s. When I was born in 1926, it crawled into age 60. Today it's nearing 80, thank God. And each year because of this remarkable, the greatest medical research in history, most people will live longer and healthier lives. America is, and still is, a land of hope and promise. And today, yesterday, today and tomorrow people are standing in lines at our embassies, seeking visas to come here and to touch freedom. That is the lesson of our country for all the world to see. These are the things we have to be thankful about in this great country of ours."