Chancellor Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schaeuble, her finance minister, are right to oppose fiscal and bank unions without political union.

It's obvious the new finance minister has very little discretion over the next several years. The Conservative fiscal plan of election 2006 exhausted virtually all fiscal surpluses in sight.

I've lived to see key parts of my research absorbed in textbooks and in central banks around the world. And some finance ministries, too.

Capitalist systems function less well without state protection of investors, lenders, and companies against monopoly, deception, and fraud.

I'm not attacking the idea that people live in conglomerations of houses in proximity to one another, sharing the same water mains and the same newspaper delivery boy and so forth. I'm not objecting to that. That could happen with or without homeownership.

Without being aware, I think I was being indoctrinated into what was called Vitalism, the idea that what makes life worth living, the good life, consists of accepting challenges, solving problems, discovery, personal growth, personal change.