The Economy's a Wreck, But We Can Fix It?

What do the experts say?

Newsweek polled several individuals and among the comments, here are a few…read the entire post for more. BD

The Rearview Mirror
Craig Barrett, chairman of the board of Intel

Where are our investments for the 21st century? Why can't we get a permanent research-and-development tax credit or fund the America Competes Act, which increases the basic research funding of the National Science Foundation and top universities? I'm afraid the bailout is typical of the current attitude of Washington—prop up old industries and forget about tomorrow. Sure we get great promises in campaigns, but in practice we starve the new ideas. Joseph Schumpeter and Adam Smith, our great free-market theorists, must be rolling over in their graves. Instead of allowing creative destruction we are propping up failures. We need to invest in smart new ideas. I think it goes without saying that the $700 billion bailout is doing exactly the opposite.

Down the Rabbit Hole
Robert Reich, former secretary of Labor under President Clinton, now professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley

At bottom, this isn't a liquidity crisis. It's a crisis of trust. No one's in charge. A lame-duck president commands almost no public trust; a Treasury secretary, who comes from the same culture that got us into this mess, can't explain what happened and what he's doing about it. Lenders of all stripes don't trust borrowers will be able to repay. Every major player is moving to safer ground—holding money, hoarding it, putting it under a giant global mattress.

What to do? Trust can be restored only if we have better regulation of Wall Street in order to avoid the sort of bubbles and Ponzi-like schemes that have generated this credit crisis.

But we also need to get money back into the pockets of average American consumers. That means major public investments in job- creating infrastructure and affordable health care, as well as a more progressive tax code.

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