In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled.

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation - microfinance - involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries.

When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents.

What the investment community does like is short-term measures designed to boost share prices.

In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.

A long-term crisis, after a certain point, no longer seems like a crisis. It seems like the way things are.

The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.