I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely.

My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.

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 important lesson of the deficit is - and the national debt - is we have to be careful about how we're spending money.

Anybody who has watched government from the inside recognizes that governments need institutions, need ways to respond to crises.

Global demand for dollars has supplanted demand for manufactured goods and services, resulting in multilateral trade deficits and loss of jobs at home.

No one would look just at a firm's revenues to assess how well it was doing. Far more relevant is the balance sheet, which shows assets and liability. That is also true for a country.