Developing protectionism regarding trade and our reluctance to place fiscal policy on a more sustainable path are threatening what may well be our most valued policy asset: the increased flexibility of our economy, which has fostered our extraordinary resilience to shocks.

Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary.

Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?

We will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common except human nature.

These days, even out of office, I still read economic reports.

History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.