The economics profession advances by one confusing financial disaster at a time.

Economics is all about consumption. People either spend money now or they use financial instruments - like bonds, stocks and savings accounts - so they can spend more later.

Economics is not a discipline that comes to correct answers - economies are too complex.

If the American government can't stand behind the dollar, the world's benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts, the largest self-imposed financial disaster in history.

There's more consensus . . . within the economics profession about how the world works than there was in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

When you see a merger between two giants in a declining industry, it can look like the financial version of a couple having a baby to save a marriage.