On 3 April 2024, the DC-based newspaper The Hill published a short version of this co-authored essay. Here is the long version.

It starts in India in 1965, I was in the Peace Corps, continues in Bali, and finishes up in Paris. The main character is a French woman.

Two of my distant French cousins died and I ended up being the heir of one estate and settling the other in the absence of a will...

In 2022, I joined a group of ex-US Treasury officials to advise the Ukraine government on key issues in international finance.

There is only bad news in this update. The military junta started conscripting men for the army, plunging the country into chaos.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across an ad from PNC Bank, perhaps embedded in a Google search. It featured the President of PNC Bank...

This is my lifetime best publishing achievement. I don't expect to ever top it in terms of readership and policy significance.

The essay in The Atlantic proposes global wealth cap, resonating with my 2016 message to the President of Brookings on wealth inequality.

Kevin Quigley and I drafted a 3,000-word essay last summer on "The Future of the Peace Corps". A short op-ed version has just been posted on

There is very little sense of community in my new residence. Does it matter? Is it related to the creation of the internet?

No new posts for more than two months because of my crazy life of travel and writing. I’m working on some topics of above-average interest.

Termessos is a city in Turkey that held off an attack by Alexander the Great in 333 BC. This is a story about historical preservation.

In 1981, I had been working in the US Treasury Department for more than five years on issues related to the roles of the IMF and World Bank.

Here is a favorite story from my youth. I told it to a friend in a conversation last week and he urged me to write it up and post it.

The problems facing the world today seem endless and intractable. Don’t expect any breakthroughs at the IMF/World Bank meetings this week.

Last Oct, the Financial Times published my Letter to the Editor suggesting that banking needs to be boring again. Now Senator Warren agrees.

Here’s why “corporate social responsibility”, often simply CSR, is a reflection of a broken political/economic system.

If you came across references to Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), did you wonder if it is like cryptocurrency? Good CBDCs are very diff

Universal Basic Income sounds crazy but it has been tested and might be adopted in the USA before the end of this century.

During my one-week visit to Istanbul, I met two Turkish history professors who are experts on the Ottoman Empire. I have hard evidence now.