Bob Greene: It's not our job to describe the economy. What we write down are mathematical models that try to answer difficult mathematical questions. The real economy, the functioning economy out there is full of mechanisms. You're operating characteristics that it has. And the essence was not so much to build a mathematical micro founded model of the economy but to understand how they operated in an imperfect world.
Robert Solow is 98 years old and a giant among economists. He tells Steve about cracking German codes in World War II, why it’s so hard to reduce inequality, and how his field lost its way.