It would be much more consumer friendly for them to beep you when you swipe your card that says, uh-oh you're over your limit, are you sure you want to use that?

Rip Van Winkle would be the ideal stock market investor: Rip could invest in the market before his nap and when he woke up 20 years later, he'd be happy. He would have been asleep through all the ups and downs in between. But few investors resemble Mr. Van Winkle. The more often an investor counts his money - or looks at the value of his mutual funds in the newspaper - the lower his risk tolerance.

A good rule of thumb is to assume that everything matters.

The money has to be deferred with what they call "clawback," which means they can get it back if I lose it all. So that guy making ten million a year selling credit default swaps, if we're going to keep five million of it in escrow for ten years, and with the right to go back and get it, if he starts losing money, then we're going to give people the right incentives not too take so much risk.

Every American worker should be able to save for retirement via payroll deductions.

The lesson from behavioral economics is that people only save if it's automatic.

I'm all for empowerment and education, but the empirical evidence is that it doesn't work. That's why I say make it easy.