That is what happened in 2010. The administration and the leadership of the Republicans thought, 'Well, we're making a deal together; we're showing the world things can be done in a bi-partisan way. We're extending all our tax cuts for two years.'

Whenever I interview someone for a job, I always ask them whether they want to sit in Bernanke's chair. The only wrong answer is, 'Who's Bernanke?'.

The only question where there is disagreement is should the highest income rates above a quarter million dollars a year go back to where they were under Bill Clinton. That is the dispute about the taxes.

What Disneyland was to my kids at age 10, that's kind of what Chicago is for economists.

A lack of reform - particularly in international tax - has hurt our ability to compete in a global economy by keeping U.S. corporate cash overseas and reducing domestic investment, slowing economic growth.

I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.

It was at the graduate school at Columbia University that I first met Wesley C. Mitchell, with whom I was associated for many years at the National Bureau of Economic Research and to whom I owe a great intellectual debt.

The Greek city-states politicised citizen and subject, creating institutions that were way ahead of anything in China or India. The politicians of antiquity exercised a political and military, if not economic, hegemony on the culture as a whole. The idea of democracy was first born and practised here.