Take astronomy. It is unlikely that a lot of astronomy will have an economic pay off. But it's a cultural thing. Every great society, after they've fought the wars, and kept the financial system running, and fed the population, has spent some fraction of its wealth on curiosity-driven research. It's just something that our country should do. And you can't use science to calculate what that fraction should be. It's a problem that's always going to be with us, and what you need is the get the most eloquent spokespersons for every field to make the cultural argument for the importance of their fields. You have to be very careful not to oversell the economic spinoffs from things that to my mind are nevertheless very much worth doing. I devoted most of my adult life to them. Q: I've asked what big issues are for science going forward? What are the big issues for you going forward? You're coming back to Congress. What are the things you're looking to get your fingers into? B.F.: Managing the economic recovery. Everything gets easier, including science, if the economy recovers as fast as is feasible. And that has to be the first priority. We've seen that there's a huge difference between an economy that's managed well and one that isn't. And we just have to make sure that we've learned from the mistakes of the past and keep the recovery accelerating as rapidly as we can. Q: You were involved in banking reform