Steven Rattner

The stagflation of the 1970s blessed us with damaging wage and price controls and the utterly counterintuitive supply-side notion - famously drawn on a napkin - that cutting taxes would lead to higher tax revenues.

Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.

Profitability, growth, and safeguards against existential risks are crucial to strengthening a company's long-term prospects. But if these three factors constitute a company's 'hard power,' firms also need 'soft power': public trust and acceptance, won by fulfilling a company's social responsibility.

Finding a 'sacrificial lamb' on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation's economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.