Legendary financier and public “Mr. Fix-it” Felix Rohatyn was at the heart of the effort to rescue New York from fiscal meltdown in its desperate 1970s.
Now, at 80, Rohatyn is calling at a moment of national crisis for Americans to think big — maybe even bigger than President Obama — about rebuilding the country for this century.
Naysayers have always scoffed at huge national investments, he says, from the Louisiana Purchase to the Interstate Highways. But those investments made America great.
This hour, On Point: The long view, with Felix Rohatyn, on rebuilding America to save America.
You can join the conversation. Are you ready to put the shovel in? To dig down and rebuild? What’s your vision? Is it the Obama vision? Something more? Something else? Must government lead the way?
-Tom Ashbrook
Guest:
Felix Rohatyn, author of “Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now.” Former managing director of the investment bank Lazard Freres & Co. and former U.S. ambassador to France under President Bill Clinton, he was chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation of the State of New York from 1975 to 1993.
Robert Puentes, senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.
We Nominate Obama to be the Secretary of Treasury.
Geithner is useless, corrupt and “criminal”.
Not only he willfuly and knowingly refused to pay his taxes on his “reported” income (god knows how much he cheated on the non-reported one); … …if I were not to pay my taxes for 4-5 years after getting 4 notices from IRS per year and still holding a lucrative top government job with power to affect finances of every american person … my butt would have been on the street before I spell I-R-S.
The only reason why his name was force-fed to Obama was because of his connections to the Gang of Thieves – Paulson, Rubin, Greenberg, Blankfein, Winkelried.
Let us pressure Obama to get rid of Geithner, yesterday.
Posted by Lilya Lopekha, on February 26th, 2009 at 10:20 AM[...] you listened to On Point’s hour with Felix Rohatyn this morning (we did), and you want to hear more from the man who saved New York [...]
Posted by Rohatyn’s plan for America — The Mediavore, on February 26th, 2009 at 10:46 AMRequest to the Producers of OnPoint
Suggested Topic: How can “Peace” (P-e-a-c-e) can be used in reducing our national debt. ~ 600 Billion/year
Suggested Guest: Ramsey Clark
Imagine the day when we change our Foreign Policy, to be just, fair and correct. And the next day, we can hop on a commercial plane, five min before the gate is closed, with no ID/Search required – just like we used to do before 1967. Let’s have TSA go out of business, instead of costing us $78 billion/year.
Posted by Lilya Lopekha, on February 26th, 2009 at 10:58 AMWhy can Europe keep up infrastructure when we can’t? I suggest it’s because in Europe the government fears the people. In the US, the people fear the government.
Give us Universal Health care, and employers will not retain employees out of fear. Unions will again rise. Our work-week and quality of life will increase, and finally, we will be more likely to hold government accountable to maintaining our infrastructure.
Posted by Ken Klein, on February 26th, 2009 at 11:23 AMOne of Eisenhower’s great ideas was financing our transportation infrastructure through the gas tax. The simple idea is people who use roads should pay for them. We now subsidize transport through general tax revenue. In the process we are subsidizing imports at the expense of locally made goods. Why not go back to Eisenhower’s approach?
Posted by Arnold Reinhold, on February 26th, 2009 at 11:27 AMInvesting in the future infrastructure of the country makes total sense, but let’s do it with a real vision for the future generations in terms of environment and sustainablitiy. It could be a great opportuniy to right past enviromental wrongs and avoiding funding new ones such as dams and the like. Even investing in a new interstate (read:semi-truck conveyor belt), while neccesary here and there, will only perpetuate the use of fossil fuels.
Our country is so behind the curve in any kind of Seven Generations thinking.
Posted by Kirby, on February 26th, 2009 at 12:19 PM“Why can Europe keep up infrastructure when we can’t? I suggest it’s because in Europe the government fears the people. In the US, the people fear the government. ”
Have you been or lived in Europe? The opposite is true. In Europe, governments are arrogant and useless.
Posted by Sandy, on February 26th, 2009 at 2:01 PMIt’s good to heat that Felix Rohatyn is still active and continues to pitch methods for improving governments and cities !
I had followed his career with MAC in NYC with some interest as an under-grad student at BU and found him to be most interesting.
Thanks for an informative program this morning !
Ken
Posted by Ken, on February 26th, 2009 at 4:07 PMHarvard Square
Cambridge, MA. 02139
Another great On Point day…almost 5 to 1 listeners are more interested in entertainment than our infrastructure…is this the end of the Obamagasm?
Posted by Tiger, on February 26th, 2009 at 8:15 PMGood show. But I wish the guests would be a little bit more honest. The talk re. infrastructure being in disrepair is always a bit disingenuous when they quote the national association of engineers saying that some huge percentage of bridges haven’t been kept up. The reality is that a big portion of those bridges are in fine repair, but they are always included in this report because they don’t have the same clearance that newer government regs require.
Posted by xysmith, on February 26th, 2009 at 11:23 PMGreat piece – man, when I’m 80 yrs old I hope I sound as lucid and eloquent as Mr. Rohatyn. Well done sir.
Posted by Lando, on February 27th, 2009 at 4:16 PMObama just doubled the amount of money for foreign aid at a time when we are broke. It makes no sense.
Posted by David, on February 28th, 2009 at 6:23 AMI have worked in the transportation industry for more than 25 years. Truckers pay a huge amount of “road use” tax that is supposed to go to paying for the highway superfund, literally 10s of trillions of dollars in taxes collected over the past 3 decades. Did any of you drive on a major highway today? Our highways are just another example that it is rare that tax money collected for a specific project, ever gets used for that specific project.
When Obama said that he was going to spend money to rebuild the infrastructure of our great country, I thought that was a noble goal. If you really want to make a capital investment in this country, take a good look at our ports, and our railroad system. 99 percent of everything that you buy or sell in an international market – we live in a global economy and that will never change – moves in an ocean container. If you have ever seen the challenges that companies face moving goods in and out of our port system, you would know what a tremendous return on investment it would be to improve and expand the access to our ports. Unfortunately, the “stimulus” package devotes less than 1 percent, around 50 billion, to highways and transit improvement, and only a fraction of that to improving our ports and rail system.
Instead, the porkulus bill contains hundreds of billions of dollars for programs that will do little in the way of making an investment in our long term future. Instead we are entrusting government agencies to provide the stimulus by re-distributing money. I have also worked with government agencies – U.S. Customs, Commerce, State, etcetera – and have never found any of them to be efficient at doing much of anything. Can anyone name a bunch of things that government agencies have done exceptionally well? They couldn’t even get my “stimulus” payment done correctly last year, and we want to entrust them with trillions of dollars more of our money? We will get what we deserve.
Posted by Sam Chaney, on February 28th, 2009 at 12:31 PMTom,
Let me add our voice to those of Mr. Rohatyn and Robert Puentes. A “bold endeavor” that would be a great topic for a follow-on program is a 25,000 mile National Maglev Network based on the superconducting Maglev transport technology invented by Drs. James Powell and Gordon Danby. The economic potential of this very energy efficient, all-weather, all-electric network is what the country needs during this period of high-unemployment and the national discussion on the fundamental importance of successfully exporting U.S. products and services to the global markets will provoke an important national discussion.
This is to suggest a program on America’s declining competitive edge in innovation with a program featuring Drs. James Powell and Gordon Danby, the co-inventors of superconducting Maglev, the most important transportation invention since the airplane.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation recently released a report (http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=226) that placed the American economy last among 40 nations and regions surveyed in terms of innovative progress made over the last decade. (NY Times Feb 23, 2009, by Steve Lohr “In Innovation, U.S. Said to Be Losing Competitive Edge”). Last year, on the same topic, there was The Gathering Storm report of the National Academy of Engineering. It is fundamental economics that America cannot grow and prosper, if it must resort to copying the technology of other countries and importing their equipment.
The Maglev story is a perfect case for illustrating how we have failed to take advantage of our innovations. Powell and Danby’s original superconducting Maglev inventions in 1966 sparked an international race that the U.S. Government dropped out of in the early 1970s. The Germans and Japanese continued and the Japanese Government developed Powell and Danby’s 1st generation superconducting Maglev system. Their successful system holds the World record at 361 mph. Japan plans to extend the present demonstration line at Yamanashi into a 300-mile long route from Tokyo to Osaka that will carry 100,000 passengers daily with a trip time of 1 hour. The German system using standard electromagnets operates in Shanghai, China.
During President Obama’s recent speech at Fort Myers, and his statement to the Conference of Mayors in Miami on June 22, he praised the Shanghai Maglev line and said it shamed America’s railroads. However, the Government appears to be backing away from Maglev and going for “proven systems.” For example, the Stimulus Package provides 8 Billion dollars for 11 High Speed Rail Corridors but no funds for the 2nd generation superconducting Maglev. The equipment for steel-wheeled, high speed rail systems like those in Europe and Japan and 1st Generation Maglev must be imported and because of their high construction and operating costs require government subsidy in both Europe and Japan. The low-cost American Maglev transport technology can carry high revenue 18 wheel freight trucks as well as passengers and will not require government subsidy once demonstrated.
We have proposed an investment of about $120 million a year for 5 years in a U.S. Maglev Test and Certification Facility similar to those in Japan and Germany. The playing field is not level, but has been heavily tilted against America by the investment of Europe and Japan’s governments.
http://www.readinessresource.net/maglev/youtube.html
Dr. Powell and I would be pleased to meet or teleconference with your producer to discuss this timely and signally important economic issu
Posted by James Jordan, on March 1st, 2009 at 3:52 PM