They called me the sexiest economist in America, and that was years ago, when I had hair and body mass and my teeth were shiny.

Buying a home wouldn't make much sense if house prices were likely to decline further; no one wants to catch a falling knife.

My policy is I will help any policymaker who asks, whether they be a Republican or a Democrat.

Our biggest challenge is to eliminate the popular perception that economists don't have anything useful to say.

We need to get rid of the debt ceiling law. It's anachronistic and it's a problem.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the U.S. housing bubble, but not much of it belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two giant housing-finance institutions made many mistakes over the decades, some of them real whoppers, but causing house prices to soar and then crater during the past decade weren't among them.

There are different flavors of recession. You can get into some pretty dark scenarios pretty quickly.