It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics because discrimination poverty and ignorance restrict growth while investments in education infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.

Education is the investment our generation makes in the future.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first but it won't take long before you feel the impact.

Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments.

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.

A rise in the level of saving can reduce aggregate activity temporarily but only a sustained high level of saving makes it possible to have the sustained high level of business investment that contributes to the long-run growth of output.

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

I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.

Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make.

Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make.