The increase in inequality in income is a longtime trend, but the pressure on middle- and low-income workers is going up rapidly. Especially if they live in an area where there are high housing and gas prices, like California.

most economists, like doctors, are reluctant to make predictions, and those who make them are seldom accurate. The economy, like the human body, is a highly complex system whose workings are not thoroughly understood.

The job of the Central Bank is to worry.

Cynics about government find much to be cynical about.

One would hope that you would have a CBO director who does not let ideology get in the way of making good estimates. [Congress] values having a credible institution that they can rely on to give them the best estimates possible.

If simple, painless solutions to public problems existed, they would have been found long ago.

The federal budget deficit is the biggest single impediment to revitalizing the American economy.