State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges in turn answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes.

All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act on their dreams with open eyes to make them possible.

I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.

Some argue that now isn't the time to push the green agenda - that all efforts should be on preventing a serious recession. That is a false choice. It fails to recognise that climate change and our carbon reliance is part of problem - high fuel prices and food shortages due to poor crop yields compound today's financial difficulties.

Up until the Depression recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.

Recessions are hard on people but they are not hard on art.