Much fiscal policy is implemented, not through spending increases, but through tax credits and other so-called tax expenditures. The markets should respond to them as they do spending cuts, with little contraction in economic activity.
I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are.
Manufacturing capacity is not a rigid level against which one bounces. When you are dealing with a world economy, with a flexibility to employ production facilities other than one's own, then the concept of capacity is vaguer.
Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.
Europe is very critical to the United States in the sense not only do we have a fourth of our exports there, but more importantly, a significant proportion of the foreign affiliate profits in fact, half of U.S. corporations, are in Europe.
The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It's been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going.
The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives - and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century.
If the world operates as one big market, every employee will compete with every person anywhere in the world who is capable of doing the same job. There are lots of them and many of them are hungry.
I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings.
I knew going in that being a single parent would be one of the toughest jobs I'd ever have. I'd been a talk-show host, actor, comic, and on and on, but this gig was going to be my defining moment.
Hatred, intolerance, poor hygienic conditions and violence all have roots in illiteracy, so we're trying to do something to help the poor and the needy.
I used to be very shy. When I first started, I had to go to a casting, and I had to go in a bikini. I thought I was too skinny. But I went in and got the job! And that's how I started.
I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike. I know that because I don't come from a wealthy background.
I've always been terrified about being bored. I always think being bored is the worst thing. The only strategic decision I ever made as an actor was to try and make each job as different as possible.
Finally, I told them I'd drop out of the management program if they'd give me an entry-level job in the newsroom for union wages, about fifty dollars a week.
I look at being a capitalist businessperson like riding a bike - if I go too slowly, I'll fall over. Or it's kind of like a shark: if I stop swimming, I'll just die.
The popularity of Groupon has almost rendered the group-buying element of it obsolete, because we're able to deliver so many customers that the merchants are very happy with even the smallest number that we can provide.
One of the challenges of innovation is figuring out how to wipe your mind clean about what you should be doing at any given moment, and not having a religious attachment to what's gotten you there thus far.
I am a misanthrope, but exceedingly benevolent; I am very cranky, and am a super-idealist. ... I can digest philosophy better than food.
I never meant to be a full-time poet: I started out as a gardener, an ideal job for a poet because your head is left free.
I grew up a happy kid in Toronto. I've never suffered. I've never even had a real job! But I understand sadness and striving, and those two things tie into all the roles that I've played.
