Consumer spending is now plunging at serious-recession rate ... even if the rescue now in train succeeds in unfreezing credit markets, the real economy has immense downward momentum. In addition to financial rescues, we need major stimulus programs.

Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time.

The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.

It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.

For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.

The science fiction world has a lot of people doing seriously imaginative thinking.