When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.

Debt is one person's liability, but another person's asset.

I'm especially baffled by the idea of taking insurance against a U.S. default. If America defaults, we're talking about a chaotic world - Mad Max, more or less - in which case, who imagines that insurance claims will be honored?

Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

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

Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action.

Outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan. It’s a modern Republican thing.