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.

We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis.

If you're doing your job right, some substantial group of people [is] going to be mad at you.

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.

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.

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.

People respond to incentives. If unemployment becomes more attractive because of the unemployment benefit, some unemployed workers may no longer try to find a job or may not try to find one as quickly as they would without the benefit.