The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it.

However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.

The habit of disguising ideology as expertise has created a deficit of legitimacy.

The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.

Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight.

The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army.