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.

Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working; their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working.

What most Americans mean when they say "the end of the recession" is, "When will it be back to normal? When can we get jobs? When will the employment rate be back to 4 percent or 5 percent?"

The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries.

The powershift began already several years ago, under the Bush administration, when the dollar became very volatile and started declining. That is when China shifted from having almost 100 percent of its reserves in dollars to 75 percent. Some countries went completely out of the dollar. The dollar, for all intents and purposes, lost its special reserve status and people starting talking about a portfolio, or basket, approach as a store of wealth instead of the dollar.

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.

Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education.