Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.

Economics is not a morality play.

Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups.

And when the chickens that didn't hatch come home to roost, we will rue the day when, misled by sloppy accounting and rosy scenarios, we gave away the national nest egg.

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.

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.

Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst.