Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.

China's accumulation of reserves is a result of the IMF's mismanagement of the Asian financial crisis a decade or so ago. If countries know they can't rely on the IMF to help them, their best defense is their own reserve cushion. In a time of spreading global recession, too much emphasis on savings in surplus countries like China can impede prospects for global growth.

Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.

The only surprise about the economic crisis of 2008 was that it came as a surprise to so many.

The fact that the government had to put up hundreds of billions of dollars to Citibank in guarantees was a public declaration that Citibank was a mess. Making Citibank go through financial restructuring would not have conveyed any more different information. So it's very hard to see why it would have had that kind of a panic if it were done well.

It is a set of policies formulated between 15th and 19th streets by the U.S. Treasury, and World Bank. Countries should focus on stabilization, liberalization, privatization.

We could, of course, always make the payments, simply by printing more money - we simply promise to pay people by giving them dollar bills - but that could set off inflation.