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People tend to think that numbers are quite objective, but numbers in economics are not like this. Some economists say they're like sausages: you don't know what they really are until you cut into them.

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you've either got to change what you're doing or find something else to do.

If I'm going to create 1,000 jobs, or 10,000 jobs, or whatever the number is, wouldn't we all be better off?

The market is incredibly inefficient and capable on rare occasions of being utterly dysfunctional. And people have a really hard time getting their brain around that fact. They want to believe that it's approximately efficient almost all the time, and it simply isn't true.

So right off, I'm going to have to say that a lot of people have been comparing Life Is Killing Me to World Coming Down, and I think a lot of those people equate art and sales figures, and I don't do that.

There is strength in numbers, but organizing those numbers is one of the great challenges.

It might sound like I'm a dreamer, but economic models have reached their height of evolution. Technology has evolved. What hasn't evolved is mankind's spirituality; everything is from 3,000 years ago. With spirituality comes morals, a better way of thinking.

What's so seductive about the efficient markets hypothesis is that it applies nine years out of ten. A lot of the time it works. But when it stops working, you blow up.

Of all the thankless jobs that economists set for themselves when it comes to educating people about economics, the notion that society is better off if some industries are allowed to wither, their workers lose their jobs, and investors lose their capital - all in the name of the greater glory of globalization - surely ranks near the top.