In the past two years, we've seen the budget go from surplus to deficit, adding about $400 billion of stimulus to the economy, but we've still lost 2.5 million private-sector jobs.

As a stimulus proposal, it's a non-starter. The economic impact is very, very small -- almost imperceptible.

The stock market has given off false signals in terms of anticipating recessions, but it has never given off a false signal about recovery before the recession ended.

The net effect was to induce a tightening mode in the markets, in bank lending and in total bank reserve growth, while [interest rates] rose significantly, especially for corporate bond issues. In retrospect, that's not looking very smart.

We've basically been in one long recession that started in the fall of 2000,

The risk to the economy is that we lose the consumer -- and I think we are losing the consumer.