International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn't go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief.

The basic thing that made Trump popular is that he blamed others for the problems that we have in the United States. We have a problem. Let's face it. The typical income, median income, of a full-time male worker - and the workers who have a full-time job are the lucky ones - is at the same level it was 42 years ago. At the bottom, real wages in the United States are at the same level they were 60 years ago.

During my three years as chief economist of the World Bank, labor market issues were looked at through the lens of neoclassical economics. A standard message was to increase labor market flexibility. The not-so-subtle subtext was to lower wages and lay off unneeded workers.

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.

You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate.

The country has large unfunded liabilities - social security, health care, and there will have to be some adjustments to these problems. What is scary though is how much worse things have gotten in the last eight years, and the Iraq war is one of the main factors.

We are helping the people that [George W.]Bush says are evil. Teheran couldn't be happier about the high oil prices resulting from the Iraq war.