Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups.

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.

Social Security is a social insurance program - it is not designed to be the same thing as a 401(k).

[The US] budget is dominated by the retirement programs, Social Security and Medicare - loosely speaking, the post-cold-war federal government is a big pension fund that also happens to have an army.

I really think that people have to think safety; taking risks for higher yield is a bad idea once you're in late or latish middle age.

There's one thing that the Fed has been really good at cracking down on, and that's inflation.

Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.