Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently.

There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.

The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid.

Not everybody is qualified to go to Stanford, but everybody should have access to the best qualify for which they are eligible.

What Trump has announced - that he is going to not obey rules by which we govern our relations with other countries. He's going to reject the treaties that we have had in the past. He is going to go from what is called a multilateral system, where we all work together, to trying to deal country by country and basically throw out what has been achieved over a 60-year period.

It's actually a tribute to the quality of economics teaching that they have persuaded so many generations of students to believe in so much that seems so counter to what the world is like. Many of the things that I'm going to describe make so much more common sense than these notions that seem counter to what one's eyes see every day.

Anybody who knows about capitalism knows that bankruptcy is an essential part of capitalism.