For me, geopolitical issues are becoming more important, because how can you understand economy if you don't understand geopolitics? People think economists just deal with spreadsheets and charts. That's a narrow-minded caricature.

I think it's true that the 1 Percent or the elite are living in a world of, maybe, excessive privilege, and they don't fully realize how much pain and suffering, how much anxiety exists out there.

My family is a Jewish Iranian family, but I was born in Turkey and raised in Italy. So it's a very mixed background.

If you worry about financial Armageddon, it is indeed metaphorically the time to stock your bunker with guns, ammunition, canned food and gold bars.

I don't personally consider myself Dr. Doom. I call myself Dr. Realist, even though it's less exciting and more boring than being called Dr. Doom. If you are consistently saying 'the world is going to end,' who is going to listen to you?

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise.