In the Matrix in which Americans live, nothing is ever their fault.

There was no terrorism in the Middle East until Washington brought it there with invasions, bombings, and torture.

The road to economic well-being is to reward productive economic activity and to provide a moderate and predictable growth of money to finance real economic growth without reigniting the fires of inflation.

The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to enforce U.S. anti-trust law. Instead, the federal agency routinely violates U.S. anti-trust law by permitting monopoly concentrations of business interests.

Marxism is a success because it fuses the two inconsistent strains in Western thought - moral skepticism and moral indignation - and makes them complements in the attack against existing society.

I have argued that the Soviet story is one of the interaction of speculative excess or utopian aspirations with refractory reality.

Paul Krugman, a professor at MIT and a consultant to the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Trilateral Commission, is certainly a member of the establishment.

The human capital of most macroeconomists, heavily invested in demand management, was wiped out by the policy failures of the 1970s.

Under Reagan's policies, inflation and nominal GNP growth shriveled much faster than predicted, throwing off government revenue estimates and resulting in budget deficits.

The U.S. is ruled by private interest groups and by the neoconservative ideology that history has chosen the U.S. as the 'exceptional and indispensable' country with the right and responsibility to impose its will on the world.

There is no independent American print or TV media.

Both political parties, Republicans and Democrats, are dependent on the same private interest groups for campaign funds, so both parties dance to the same masters.

As the U.S. is import-dependent, this will translate into higher domestic prices.

As the dollar's exchange value declines, so will the value of dollar-denominated financial instruments, regardless of how many bonds the Federal Reserve purchases.

When I met with Chinese policymakers in 2006, I advised them that there was a limit to how long they could rely on the U.S. consumer market, as jobs offshoring was destroying it.

Few, if any, corporations absorb the full cost of their operations. Corporations shove many of their costs onto the environment, the public sector, and distant third parties.

Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism, which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.

Progressives regard government as the white knight that protects the public from the greed of capitalists. If only.

The public subsidies provided to miners, loggers, and ranchers are as extravagant and as harmful to the public interest as the subsidies that the Federal Reserve and Treasury provide to the 'banks too big to fail.'

The Western media is a Ministry of Truth that operates full-time in support of the artificial existence that Westerners live inside The Matrix where Westerners exist without thought. Considering their inaptitude and inaction, Western peoples might as well not exist.

Once a country descends into evil, it doesn't emerge.

By offshoring the production of their products, U.S. corporations transferred technology, physical plant, and business knowhow to China.

Offshoring manufacturing jobs left Americans with fewer high-value-added, well-paid jobs, and the U.S. middle class downsized. Ladders of upward mobility were taken down. Income and wealth distributions worsened.

Washington is a black hole into which all sanity is sucked out of government deliberations.

In 2004, I predicted in a nationally televised conference in Washington, D.C., that the U.S. would be a Third World country in 20 years.

The concentration of U.S. income and wealth in the hands of the very rich is a new development in my lifetime.

Washington's impulsive use of power is a danger to America and to the world.

The real Social Security crisis is that the government does not have the money to redeem its IOUs.

The government, of course, will print money to bail out the banks' uncovered casino bets, but not to bail out the elderly from the theft of their funds.

Representing the people is not something 'our' representatives do. They are too busy representing a handful of private interest groups such as the financial sector, the military/security complex, and agribusiness.

The way to attack the entitlements problem is to bring the jobs home. This could be done by taxing corporations according to the location, domestic or foreign, at which they add value to their product.

If all countries are exceptional, the word loses its meaning.

A government that cannot survive truth and must resort to stamping out truth is not a government that any country wants.

The Transatlantic and Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnerships have nothing to do with free trade. 'Free trade' is used as a disguise to hide the power these agreements give to corporations to use lawsuits to overturn sovereign laws of nations that regulate pollution, food safety, GMOs, and minimum wages.

The office of U.S. Trade Representative was created in order to permit corporations to write law that serves only their interests.

There are no free financial markets in America or, for that matter, anywhere in the Western word, and few, if any, free markets of any other kind.

The financial markets are rigged by the big banks, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury in the interests of the profits of the few big banks and the dollar's exchange value, which is the basis of U.S. power.

Sometimes we fall in love with the idea of a person and have trouble seeing the real thing.

In tragedy, it's hard to find a good resolution; it's not black and white: it's a big fog of gray.

I think you sometimes have to go hit rock bottom before you can grow and rebuild as a person.

I don't have any tattoos.

Let's say honorary favorite New Yorker is John Lennon, and favorite real New Yorker is Biggie, because he's the best.

I do think the first time you read a script, that gut response is very important, and that probably plants a seed that continues to blossom throughout the whole experience.

I don't like to spend a lot of money on haircuts: I'll sometimes grow my hair and get an acting job and get them to cut it for free. I think for a lady, though, it's okay to spend a lot on a haircut.

The world of the homeless is a tough and interesting world.

When you repeat yourself so many times, even if you're speaking the truth, the repetition starts to feel false. Sometimes, you just feel like the words you're speaking, even if they once had meaning, have lost it. And that makes you feel kind of silly.

Robert De Niro's sort of like a surfer: he doesn't really force anything. So if he catches the wave, or something spills out - to watch a guy be a force at what he does. He has a good worth ethic.

Spring and fall in New York are the best seasons here to get out and about. I like the little park in Dumbo between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge. I like Prospect Park.

I love Brooklyn; it's a part of who you are.

I do like the idea of consequence and how our actions play themselves out, but I am completely scared of knowing what the future would be like. I would never go near a fortune teller, even though it's probably not even real. I just don't wanna know.