Disciplined governments do not engage in the economic equivalent of binge eating followed by crash dieting.

I think my wife would take objection to any characterization of me as perfect.

You can actually make a lot of money and do a lot of good in the world. I don't see those things as being in opposition to one another. I never have.

A government decision that slashes spending at the wrong time and sends a weak economy into a tailspin can be just as undisciplined as one that unleashes a wasteful spending spree in an overheated environment.

As an economist, I'm aware that life is full of trade offs.

Between 2001 and 2011, Brazil lifted 20 million people out of poverty and into its growing middle class, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century Botswana's gross domestic product per capita grew faster than that of any other country on the planet. The once-labeled 'Third World' is edging its way into the 'First World.'

Good economic policy requires not so much the bravado to implement drastic change as the strength and wisdom to make reasonable trade-offs over the many years it takes to transform a country's standard of living.