Nobody prefers to earn income any more, because that's taxable. Rich people prefer to make capital gains.

Normally, if someone goes bankrupt, you wipe out the debt and get a fresh start. But that's not permitted with student loans. So the effect is to impoverish many graduates with very high debts.

I think we're in the take-the-money-and-run stage of the economy. So the banks may go under, but the bankers, who make the policy, clean up.

I think the Republican tax law is so bad that it almost guarantees a Republican victory, precisely because it's so bad. The seeming irony is that it's so bad that it enables the Democratic Party to think, "A-ha, all we have to do is be the lesser evil.

The United States is pushing as policy division of the world into rival currency camps - the dollar area on the one hand, and the Russia-Chinese-Shanghai Cooperation Organization group on the other, especially now that the IMF has changed its rules. People think that if there are rival currency groupings and national currencies are going bust, we might as well use gold as a safe haven.

People are putting their money into treasuries because they worry that the risk of putting their money into the bond market, the stock market or even the money markets is very high.

We're in a chronic debt-deflation. There's no way we can recover unless you write down the debts. And that's what the IMF basically is implying (and it was explicit regarding Greece), but its not spelling it out, because that's not what can be said in polite company.