Governments have begun to write fiscal discipline into law.
He is credited with injecting more discipline into the operation.
"They scare that discipline into you in basic training," Eriksson told me.
And educators were reluctant to cram another discipline into already full curriculums.
On the one hand, it injects some sanity and rigor and discipline into the system.
Introducing a new discipline into academia is like getting a new sport into the Olympics.
"When you add fiscal discipline into the mix," he said, "it's four to one".
Solitary confinement has been transmuted from an occasional tool of discipline into a widespread form of preventive detention.
He argues that this would inject discipline into the system, allowing investors to penalise companies that consistently make bad estimates.
"It is relatively easy to get discipline into the process of putting assets on to the books.
Bureaucrats in Brussels may yet inject more discipline into the banks than the free market ever did.
