These are questions for action, not speculation, which is idle.

I didn't pay my taxes for years.

The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

In the academic world, most of the work that is done is clerical. A lot of the work done by professors is routine.

A dramatic, evocative, thoughtful and very accessible account of one of the most important stories of the century - and one of the most ominous, unless citizens are aroused to action to rein in abusive state power.

The book [Manufacturing Consent] itself is then devoted to a series of case studies, selected, we hope [with Edward Herman], to offer a fair and in fact rather severe test of those conclusions.

Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.