There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.

But individuals and firms spend an enormous amount of resources acquiring information, which affects their beliefs; and actions of others too affect their beliefs.

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax "relief" for the wealthy.

If the President asked you to help, I don't think anybody could refuse, unless one felt that one couldn't be effective.

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 country that's been most successful at that is Norway. The more typical countries are those in the Middle East where a small group seizes those resources, uses it to buy arms to make sure that they can oppress the remainder, and you get these great inequalities. So Canada is among the better performing of the natural resource economies, but it's still not up to the best performing.

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.