The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.

In short, it's a great economy if you're a high-level corporate executive or someone who owns a lot of stock. For most other Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.

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

I think Stockman is an interesting sort of amalgam.

By rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.

Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.