I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.

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?

I'm not sure that the current value of the NASDAQ is justified, but I'm not sure that it isn't.

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

Not all private equity people are evil. Only some.

Asset bubbles have happened even without not-so-easy money. And, in a depressed economy, where alternative uses of money are not great, people are going to bid up the prices of profitable corporations and stuff like that.

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.