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

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.

In Jamaica, you're never very far away from people who don't have very much, and in Wilmette, pretty much everybody had a lot.

I think that whether you're on the right or on the left as an economist or as a policy maker, every serious analyst I know agrees that at some point you have to deal with entitlements.

Economic growth creates jobs, and countries grow when they educate their people and pursue policies that encourage households to save, existing businesses to invest, and entrepreneurs to innovate and create new markets.

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

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.