Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher asset prices, ... This is the reason that history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

Even though some down payments are borrowed, it would take a large, and historically most unusual, fall in home prices to wipe out a significant part of home equity. Many of those who purchased their residence more than a year ago have equity buffers in their homes adequate to withstand any price decline other than a very deep one.

When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined.

Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict.

Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.

The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.