As a rich country, we can, in some sense, "afford" the war. But spending money on the war means that we are not spending money on other things that we could have spent the money on.

Wall Street banks have used the same tactic that Bush used in the war on terror - fear - and they've basically said that if you don't do what we tell you, the sky will fall. If you don't do what we tell you, it will be the end of capitalism as we know it. The failure of Lehman Brothers lent some credence to those fears.

Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with everyday observation.

There was a hope then by some people that what we call trickle-down economics would work. That if you made the economy pie bigger, everybody would benefit. Twenty-five years after NAFTA, we know that that is not true. We should have known then that it was not true.

I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced.

I find it scandalous not only that there was so little discussion of the costs of the Iraq war before we went to war - this was, after all, a war of choice - but even five years into the war, the Administration has not provided a comprehensive accounting of the war.

America has had to turn to foreigners to finance its debt - not surprising since household saving in the last years has plummeted to zero. China is one of the largest holders of American debt.