If it were possible to take interest rates into negative territory I would be voting for that.

Prospects for growth in the year ahead are solid at the national level, and of course, this can only be good news for the Bay Area and California as well. The U. S. economy has shown remarkable resilience in the face of some severe shocks - in particular, the surge in energy prices that began a couple of years ago and the devastation wrought by the twin hurricanes last summer.

The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than that of income. ...The wealthiest 5% of American households held 54% of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61% in 2010 and reached 63% in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution —families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million —held 43% of wealth in 1989 and only 36% in 2013.

The past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority.

It slightly worries me that when people find a problem, they rush to judgment of what to do.

We need to increase the transparency of shadow banking markets so that authorities can monitor for signs of excessive leverage and unstable maturity transformation outside regulated banks.

Will capitalist economies operate at full employment in the absence of routine intervention? Certainly not.