“I have not been able in one lecture even to scratch the surface of the...” — Paul Samuelson Quote

I have not been able in one lecture even to scratch the surface of the role of maximum principles in analytic economics.

The very name of my subject, economics, suggests economizing or maximizing. But Political Economy has gone a long way beyond home economics.

U.S. capital formation, which has been pretty high in the '90s and very high in the late 1990s, is what is being financed by the savings of the rest of the world, generally poorer than ourselves, because our deficit on current account, chronic deficit, is their surplus, and they have been willingly bringing that to the American market.

The contrafactual history is what it would have been the other way. Think of the Kennedy triumph in the missiles crisis. Worked out fine. Khrushchev blinked and so forth. The other road, you don't want to think too hard about. You could have had nuclear missiles wiping out a tenth of the globe.

Everyone has to make their own decisions. I still believe in that. You just have to be able to accept the consequences without complaining.

I am accused of using hard language. I admit the charge. I have not been able to find a soft word to describe villainy or to identify the perpetrator of it. The man who makes a chattel of his brother - what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud - what is he?

I'm in a hallowed league of artists. Whether it's Billie Holiday or Rakim or Jimmy Hendrix or... I don't know, MGMT, we're all blessed to be able to create. It's a lineage that extends a long time. And to be able to be active in it and have made a difference in it, it's humbling. To know I had a place in all of this; that's the rewarding part.

When I'm not working, I just like to be comfortable: I love black, nothing tight, no heels, no make-up - it's nice to be able to breathe!