One has to always ask the question: Where can one be most effective in helping shape policies? It is always difficult when you're inside because you're very constrained.

The striking thing about America is - it's historically, extraordinary unusual, I don't of any other instance - is that productivity of workers and wages have not moved in tandem.

We noted the psychological problems facing many of the returning from Iraq veterans - of the 700,000 returning veterans, more than a 100,000 have been diagnosed with problems, but the numbers are likely to get worse, as those with multiple deployments return. We should have valued the loss of life as a result of these suicides, using the same procedures we used for the loss of those who died in combat.

Trickle-down economics is a myth. Enriching corporations - as the TPP would - will not necessarily help those in the middle, let alone those at the bottom.

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.

When I said "the pocket of the banks," it is not necessarily a mercenary relationship. It is a mindset.

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