Surely I'm not the only person to ask the obvious question: How different, really, is Mr. Madoff's tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?

It should be possible to emphasize to students that the level of employment is a macroeconomic issue, depending in the short run on aggregate demand and depending in the long run on the natural rate of unemployment, with microeconomic policies like tariffs having little net effect. Trade policy should be debated in terms of its impact on efficiency, not in terms of phoney numbers about jobs created or lost.

But Wall Street people are in fact very smart; they're funny, they're not company men who work their way up the chain.

There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises.

I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried.

It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

[D]ebt increases that didn't arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments.