In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.

But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail.

If we didn't have the rest of the world growing, the United States economy would be in much worse shape than it is today.

The situation in Syria is quite different from Libya.

I don't want to paint a picture of total gloom and doom.

Having your fiscal house in order and having a more manageable macro-economic future is going to be very useful in creating growth.

California has often led the country, indeed the world, in the technology, consumption, trends, lifestyles, and of course, mass entertainment. It is where the car found its earliest and fullest expression, where suburbs blossomed, where going to gym replaced going to church, where forces that lead so many to assume that direct democracy is the wave of the future - declining political parties, telecommuting, new technology, the internet generation 0 are all most well developed in this vast land.