Rather than saying 'My checking account is a wreck ' change it to 'I will learn how to track my spending and balance my checkbook.'

If one's honest about it spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.

Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very very good. Spending $1 000 for a ham sandwich would feel very very bad. Spending $19 000 for a small family car would feel well more or less right. But as with physical pain fiscal pain can depend on the individual and everyone has a different threshold.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

In principle there are only three main components of spending that much matter to monetary policy: consumer spending business investment and exports and trade.

If you have a line of business - I know this as a CEO - or if you have a teenager - I know this as a parent - who have a spending problem what do you do? You quit giving them money.

My approach to cutting spending as president is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget.

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else.

You can have a laugh in Los Angeles or you can weep in Los Angeles depending on your attitude towards it.

Nothing. We're all friends and friendly. So when the cameras go down depending on the mood or the nature of the material we're dealing with there's usually a kind of a prevailing light attitude that's floating around.