A derivative is a bet on whether a stock, or a bond or a real estate asset, is going to go up or down. There's a winner and a loser. It's like betting on a horserace.

We're still in the collapse that began after 2008. There's not a new collapse, there hasn't been a recovery.

Actually, high housing prices don't help the economy. They raise the cost of living.

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 only way people can repay the debt is by cutting their living standards very drastically. It means agreeing to shift their pension plans from defined benefit plans - when you know what you're going to get - into just "defined contribution plans," where you put money in, like into a roach motel, and you don't know what's coming out.

Everybody would be better off if they could buy housing for only, let's say, a carrying charge of one-quarter of their income. That used to be the case 50 years ago. Buyers had to save up and make a higher down payment, giving them more equity - perhaps 25 or 30 percent. But today, banks are creating enough credit to bid up housing prices again.

In fact, there's no way that banks can be paid everything that they're owed.