I'm a better economist than I was a sax player.

We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami. Central banks and governments are being required to take unprecedented measures. Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.

I love facts and figures. It's like following a detective story, piecing together what's going on in the economy.

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.

We need, in effect, to make the phantom 'lock-boxes' around the trust fund real.

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?