Spc. Ryan Howard of Niles, Mich., right, and Spc. David Straub of Ardmore, Okla., wait for news of fellow soldiers while waiting at the gate of the Fort Hood, Texas, Army base on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. (AP)

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A shock out of Texas at the end of this week, and a day of horror.

Thirteen killed, thirty wounded at Fort Hood in a shooting rampage in the heart of an American military base. Apparently by a uniformed Army major, Nidal Malik Hasan.

It’s a tragedy and horror the country is still taking on board — overshadowing the economy, where unemployment has hit 10.2 percent. Overshadowing state elections and their fallout. An imminent health care vote. Hard news in Afghan and Palestinian politics.

This hour, On Point: The killings at Fort Hood, and the news of the week in review.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Dallas, Texas, is Bill McKenzie, editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News.

Joining us from New York is Hendrick Hertzberg, staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is “Obamanos!: The Birth of a New Political Era.”

And from Hanover, N.H., is Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (left) gets ready to testify before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009, as the Committee's Chairman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) presided. (AP)

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One year ago, the U.S. government and all of us were over a big, ugly barrel. Bail out the mega banks, or they would crash and take the whole economy down with them. “Too big to fail.”

And so we bailed and bailed and bailed. Billions and billions in taxpayers’ dollars to save the banks that had driven the crisis. And the cry went up: “Never again.”

Well, now the tools for “never again” are on the table, and there’s a huge debate over whether they will work, or bring Wall Street running back for more.

This hour, On Point: How to fix “too big to fail” on Wall Street.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us in our studio is Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. His new book is “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.”

Joining us from Washington is Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.  He’s spearheading the Financial Stability Improvement Act of 2009.

Also from Washington we’re joined by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), member of the House Financial Services Committee. He calls the Financial Stability Improvement Act of 2009 “TARP on steroids.”

 

President Barack Obama salutes as the remains of Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., are carried from a plane at Dover Air Force Base on Thursday morning, Oct. 29, 2009. According to the Department of Defense, Sgt. Griffin died in Afghanistan. (AP)

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Recession? What recession? We’ve got 3.5 percent growth in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said this week — so maybe that’s over. Or maybe not.

In Pakistan, Hillary Clinton took jabs — until she hit back. Pakistan must know where Al Qaeda is, she said, and could get them if they wanted to.

We’ve got a health plan from the House this week, an all-night vigil by the president at Dover Air Base, no decision yet on troops and Afghanistan, and no flu vaccine for lots of people in line. A skinny rocket goes up. Michael Jackson’s back.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Anne Kornblut, White House correspondent for The Washington Post. Her forthcoming book is “Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win.”

Also from Washington we’re joined by Howard Fineman, senior Washington correspondent and columnist at Newsweek. His latest  book, now out in paperback, is “The Thirteen Arguments.”

And from Hanover, N.H., we’re joined by Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

More links:

In today’s roundtable we talked about Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain who became the first foreign service official serving in Afghanistan to publicly resign in protest over the war. The Washington Post reported on the story and posted Hoh’s resignation letter.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) whispers with Kai Eide, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai, right, looks on during a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009. Afghanistan's election commission Tuesday ordered a Nov. 7 runoff in the disputed presidential poll. (AP)

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Two pilots may have been asleep this week with 147 passengers onboard. The pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, was not.

New pay cuts rolled out for top execs at bailed-out banks, and Fed oversight for pay at thousands of banks across the country.

In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai bows to election fraud charges and a likely runoff vote. Pakistan and the Taliban go bloody nose to nose.

On Capitol Hill, the health care “public option” comes back. Bad polls for the GOP. And the White House tangles with Dick Cheney and Fox News.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jay Newton-Small, congressional correspondent for Time magazine. She also writes for Time’s “Swampland” politics blog.

Tom Gjelten, NPR correspondent covering national security and intelligence. His new book, just out in paperback, is: “Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: A Biography of a Cause.”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor for The Atlantic.

Stewart Brand

In today’s first hour, Whole Earth guru Stewart Brand and energy expert Amory Lovins debated whether the U.S. should build more nuclear power plants in the effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Brand’s new book, “Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto,”  takes on a number of what he calls environmental “pieties,” including opposition to nuclear power. He says nuclear is now “green” — and that we can’t afford to oppose it any longer on the old grounds, given the urgent need to address climate change. 

Amory Lovins

Lovins has recently argued against Brand’s view, in a posting at Grist.org, and he layed out his case for us on the air today.

It all mirrors a debate in Washington about whether more nuclear power should be a serious component of a new energy-climate bill.

You can listen to the exchange here:

And here’s a transcript:

TOM ASHBROOK: Amory Lovins, you’ve pushed back fairly hard and quite publicly on Stewart Brand’s embrace here of nuclear power. Why?
AMORY LOVINS: Although Stewart and I share a great sense of urgency about climate change, I think the more urgent you think that problem is, the more important it is to invest judiciously to get the most solution per dollar and the most solution per year. And nuclear flunks both those tests. It gives about two to twenty times less carbon savings per dollar and about twenty to forty times less carbon savings per year than if you brought instead the things that are walloping it in the market, namely micropower and energy efficiency.
TOM ASHBROOK: What is micropower?
AMORY LOVINS: Micropower has two parts. One is renewables other than big hydro. So it’s sun, wind, geothermal, small hydro, and so on. And the other part is co-generating electricity and useful heat together in factories or buildings, which saves at least half of the fuel money in carbon.
TOM ASHBROOK: So your core argument is not the nuclear waste argument, but a cost-effectiveness argument around nuclear?
AMORY LOVINS: Correct. Nuclear is about the most expensive and slowest thing you can build. And I don’t think it’s true you need to build everything. You can’t afford to build everything. You need to choose the best buys for your goal, just as in assembling a financial portfolio you don’t stuff it full of one of everything on the market. You figure out the diversified set of assets that will best meet your investment objectives. If you buy something really expensive and risky, that actually makes your portfolio perform worse because you didn’t get to buy stuff that would have performed better.
TOM ASHBROOK: Stewart Brand, what about the argument? You’re arguing a big push in nuclear. Amory Lovins says it’s not the most cost-effective way forward and it really matters what we pull the trigger on here.
STEWART BRAND: I was surprised that in Amory’s good and thorough response to the chapter [on nuclear energy], which I’m glad to see is out there, and it’s downloadable from Rocky Mountain Institute. One of the things, Amory, you didn’t address in that was [nuclear] microreactors, and I’m delighted you’re talking about micropower because it looks like the new generation of those small reactors down around 100 to 125 megawatts coming from half a dozen manufacturers are right in there. And [they] could do co-generation and local adaptivity and all the things you’d like to see distributed micropower do.
AMORY LOVINS: It might have been a good idea to look at 50 years ago, but it’s way too late. Actually, I did describe it… I wrote a special paper on this called “New Nuclear Reactor, Same Old Story” last spring, because I got really curious about these arguments and dug into them. There are two basic issues, that again are economic, that I get to before the other attributes. I think the Gen 4 reactor types are broadly comparable to today’s reactors in waste production. They might in some respects be respects be safer. They’re generally as proliferative or more proliferative. But their economics are not sufficiently better to make any difference, for two reasons. One is that of course what makes a reactor work is that you have a very concentrated source of heat and also of radioactivity, and the physical devices you need to harness the heat and manage the heat and radioactivity do not scale down very well. It’s just a matter of physical scaling laws. Secondly…
STEWART BRAND: Wait, wait, wait. Isn’t that the case also with solar thermal? They’re using the same thing. They’re using smaller steam turbines.
AMORY LOVINS: To some degree, it’s true of the steam turbine, except that there you don’t have a concentrated source and you don’t need shielding. And the mirrors—or troughs or whatever – are very well suited to scaling down and to mass production. The more serious problem, though, is one of timing. The things you’re competing with, or the things that all nuclear fails to compete with by large margins, are already getting their economies from mass production. They’re things like photovoltaics and wind turbines. And they are decades further along in getting their scale economies. And then by the time you’ve got some kind of new reactor that’s usually been on the books for forty or fifty years to be actually licensed, financed, built, tested – and then you’ve scaled up production of it – you’d be more decades behind, at least one or two, the things that are already several times cheaper. In fact, if you were to take today’s nuclear plants and make the nuclear part free, the other roughly two-thirds of the investment would still be grossly uncompetitive with efficiency and micropower.

Brand and Lovins also took up the issue of nuclear safety, after one of the show’s callers raised the issue. Here’s the exchange on that:

TOM ASHBROOK: Stewart Brand, what about the safety issue when it comes to nuclear?
STEWART BRAND: It’s been very good…[t]he people around nuclear reactors, they’re polled every so often: “What do you think about nuclear, nuclear reactors, would you like to have another nuclear reactor at the plant nearby?” It’s the most positive support the industry gets, people who are closest to the industry out in the landscape. So, at least all the data from that shows it’s not so big an issue…
TOM ASHBROOK: Amory Lovins, the safety aspect of nuclear?
AMORY LOVINS: …I think we need to remember that, although there are many honest and conscientious people in this industry that know they’re dealing with serious matters, organizations are fallible, just as individuals are, and they often do things that the individuals in them would not do by themselves. Historically, whenever you get a period like we’ve been in the last eight years, where there’s a very pro-nuclear administration and that sends all the signals against dissent and rocking the boat, this turns out to be bad for the nuclear industry. Because bad things end up happening that wouldn’t have if we had been more alert. And you get capture of the regulatory apparatus by the industry being regulated and so on. So I think the issues of human fallibility remain serious in this industry. I just don’t tend to treat those first, because if the technology is unnecessary, uneconomic and actually reduces and retards climate protection, I stop there. I don’t go on to whether it’s proliferative or unsafe or whether we know what to do with the waste.
STEWART BRAND: Amory, question, what do you make of the rather pro-nuclear stance of the current administration?
AMORY LOVINS: I think there are differing views within the administration. And I think the differences between our views are mirrored there and that our discussion will be helpful in informing those internal debates. I think also a lot of the pressure comes from members of Congress more than members of the administration.
STEWART BRAND: The Democrats there, the powerful ones, are sounding more pro-nuclear every day with the climate bill.

You can listen to the whole show here.

A home with a sale pending is shown in Tallahassee, Fla, Sept. 23, 2009. The National Association of Realtors said on Oct. 1 that the volume of signed contracts to buy previously occupied homes rose for the seventh straight month in August as buyers rushed to take advantage of a tax credit for first-time owners that expires at the end of November. (AP)

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An American housing bubble and bust lead the U.S. economy into near-collapse. An ocean of federal funds and tax credits have helped slow the bust.

Now, some of those interventions are winding up, just as a new wave of foreclosures may be looming. An $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers expires next month. Lobbying is hot and heavy right now to have it extended and expanded.

Otherwise, home builders and realtors warn, home prices could skid again. They may anyway.

This hour, On Point: Home prices, housing, the U.S. economy, and what comes next.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Diana Olick, real estate correspondent for CNBC.

Joining us from Wellesley, Mass., is Karl Case, professor of economics at Wellesley College and co-author, with Yale economist Robert Shiller, of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the most widely cited database of housing prices in the U.S.

From Leesburg, Va., we’re joined by Thomas Lawler, housing economist and founder of Lawler Economic & Housing Consulting.

And from San Diego we’re joined by Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Moody’s Economy.com.

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One year after a public bailout, the bonuses are back — big-time — at Goldman Sachs. The headline now: a $23 billion bonus pool estimated on the way for the bankers.

Meanwhile, unemployment is sky high. Foreclosures, too. And middle class anxiety.

You can feel the discontent, the anxious volatility in America right now. My guest today says one way or another it’s the stuff of revolution.

Really? Here? We’ll hear his case — and we’ll hear from an historian who says it’s not so easy to light that American fuse.

This hour, On Point: The powder keg argument, American history, and America now.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Bruce Judson, senior faculty fellow at the Yale University School of Management. He’s author of the new book, “It Could Happen Here: America on the Brink.”

Lawrence Goodwyn, professor emeritus of history at Duke University. He’s author of “The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America” and “Breaking the Barrier: The Rise of Solidarity in Poland.”

President Barack Obama listens during a meeting about the current situation in Pakistan on Oct. 7, 2009 in the Situation Room of the White House. (White House Photo/Pete Souza)

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A stunner from Oslo.  Eight and a half months into his presidency, President Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.  For creating, said the committee, “a new international climate.” 

The news tops a week in which the White House was hunkered down in war council over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. 

A week of bombings in Kabul and Peshawar.  A swooning US dollar.  A green light on the cost of health care reform. Letterman in shame.  And NASA blasting the moon. 

This hour, On Point:  Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Chrystia Freeland, U.S. managing editor of The Financial Times.

Jonathan Martin, senior political writer for Politico.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Job seekers fill out applications for positions at a new bar and restaurant while standing in line in Detroit, Sept. 25, 2009. (AP)

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The job news has gone from bad to worse: 9.8 percent official unemployment. Far worse if you factor in those who’ve given up. And worse to come, we’re told.

Big voices are saying we’ve got to get much more radical in rescuing the American job market. But how do you get more radical than trillions in stimulus and TARP money — when a vast deficit already gapes?

This hour, On Point: Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich and chief TARP overseer Elizabeth Warren on the jobless recovery– and rescuing the American job market.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Robert Reich joins us from Berkeley, Calif. He was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and is now a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His most recent book is “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life.”

Elizabeth Warren joins us from Washington, D.C. She is a professor at Harvard Law School and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with monitoring the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP. She has written eight books and more than a hundred scholarly articles dealing with credit and economic stress. Her latest two books, “The Two-Income Trap” and “All Your Worth,” were both on national bestseller lists.

(Photo: Flickr/rutlo; click for full image)

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For generations, small-town rural America was the iconic face of America. Main Street. Parades. Values. The heart of the nation. The ground beneath everything else.

Not now, says my guest today. Small-town rural America is hollowing out.

Corporate giants farm the fields. Small-town achievers run to the cities. And the heartland — the onetime backbone of the country — she says, is in trouble. Lights, going out. Leaders, leaving town.

Is she right? This hour, On Point: What’s going on with small-town rural America?

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Philadelphia is Maria J. Kefalas, associate professor of sociology at Saint Joseph’s University. She’s author of “Working Class Heroes” and “Promises I Can Keep.”  Her new book, co-written with husband Patrick J. Carr, is “Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America.” Read an excerpt here.

Joining us from Des Moines, Iowa, is Ernest Goss, a professor of regional economics at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He writes the Rural Mainstreet Index, a survey of key rural and small-town economic indicators, and is author of “Governing Fortune: Casino Gambling in America.”

And from Carroll, Iowa, we’re joined by Douglas Burns is a columnist for the Daily Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa, a newspaper owned by his family. He moved back after working in Washington, D.C. for four years. 

In a guest post on the On Point blog, Burns makes his pitch for why living in rural Iowa is better: “The time other people spend driving we spend living.”

President Barack Obama chairs a meeting of the United Nations Security Council at the United Nations headquarters, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009. At rear is U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. (AP)

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The small-world principle was on big display in the U.S. this week. Leaders from all over, sitting elbow to elbow at the UN in New York. Leaders of the world’s twenty most powerful economies descending on Pittsburgh.

We’ve got a nuclear weapons vote in the Security Council. “Rebalancing” on the table at the G20. Explosive charges that Iran is hiding secret nuclear capacity.

Health care reform grinding on in Wahsington. And terrorism plot allegations tumbling out of Denver, Dallas, and Springfield, Illinois.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Ruth Marcus, editorial writer and columnist for The Washington Post.

Also from Washington, we’re joined by Susan Glasser, executive editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

And from Hanover, N.H., we’re joined by Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Workers at a Chinese factory in Beijing last month. China strongly opposed President Barack Obama's decision to impose punitive tariffs on imports of car and light truck tires, calling it protectionism that violates World Trade Organization rules. (AP)

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The G20 sits down in Pittsburgh today — leaders of the world’s rich and emerging-rich nations.

The Obama administration is clear on what it wants out of Pittsburgh: a commitment to “rebalance” the world’s economy, for China to buy more of its own products, and Americans to make more of their own.

Coming on the heels of a fat new U.S. tariff on Chinese tires, that sounds to some like trade-war talk. Protectionism. The end of globalization as we’ve known it.

Some Americans want that. Others say, hold on.

This hour, On Point: The G20, trade, and “rebalancing” the global economy.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Zanny Minton Beddoes, economics editor for The Economist. She edited last week’s cover story, “Playing with fire,” about the Obama administration’s “alarming trade row with China.” Also see The Economist editorial, “Economic vandalism,” on Barack Obama and free trade.

Also from Washington we’re joined by Robert Scott, senior international economist and director of international programs at the Economic Policy Institute. He studies trade agreements and their impact on working people in the U.S. and other countries, as well as the macro-economic effects of trade and capital flows.

Joining us from Ithaca, New York, is Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China Division. His recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal was headlined “A Dangerous Game of Trade ‘Chicken.’”

Jose Rivera, 54, a resident of a homeless encampment in Fresno, Calif., was photographed on Thursday, June 18, 2009. (AP)

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Politicians love to talk about the middle class. Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the poor.

There are a lot of poor in this country. Working poor. The economic crisis of the last year has pushed their lives from hard to harder. And the nation’s response, says Ehrenreich, has been almost cruel. Not help, but the back of a hand.

This hour we’ll sit down with Barbara Ehrenreich — and with two women, hotel housekeepers, recently fired by a national hotel chain that hired replacements at half their wages.

This hour, On Point: life on the edge in hard times, with Barbara Ehrenreich.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Barbara Ehrenreich joins us from Washington. She’s a journalist and author of several books, among them “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” and “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream.” Her recent four-part series on poverty in America ran on The New York Times Op-Ed page.  Her new book, out next month, is “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.”

Joining us in our studio is Lucine Williams, a mother of two, worked for 21 years and eleven months at a Hyatt Hotel in Boston as a housekeeper. She had a full-time, non-union job with benefits. In August, Hyatt Corporation laid off approximately 100 cleaning staff and replaced them with outsourced employees making half their salary. The hotel chain has since extended the health benefits of the laid-off workers and offered job-search assistance.

Also with us in our studio is Angela Norena. She worked at a Hyatt Hotel in Boston for 15 years until she was laid off three weeks ago. She’s the mother of a 14-year old son.

People check job listings on computers at JobTrain in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009. The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent in August, the highest since June 1983. (AP)

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In all the years since World War II, the United States has not seen job losses like it’s seen in the last two years.

Unemployment is now just under 10 percent, and expected to go higher next year. Long-term unemployment, the highest since records were launched in 1948. Economists are talking “jobless recovery,” which for millions will not seem like recovery at all.

This hour, On Point: We’re getting up close with America’s unemployment epidemic, and asking whether, when, and how the jobs will come back.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Massimo Calabresi, Washington correspondent for Time magazine. His article in this week’s issue, “The Ripple Effect,” looks at how unemployment has affected the community of Roxboro, NC. His piece appears as part of the cover story package, “Jobless in America: Is Double-Digit Unemployment Here to Stay?”

Also from Washington, we’re joined by Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute focusing on labor markets.

And from New York we’re joined by Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at New York University and the London School of Economics.  He’s written several books on work-life dynamics, including “The Corrosion of Character” and “The Culture of the New Capitalism.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where high level meetings were held in a last attempt to save Lehman Brothers, as photographed on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008. (AP)

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One year ago this week, Wall Street was coming down, and taking the American economy with it. AIG, Merrill Lynch in free fall. Giant banks wobbling. Lehman Brothers, allowed to collapse.

Americans lost jobs and dreams and years of savings. Everyone swore the system had to change.

One year later, Wall Street’s survivors are very much back in business. Big pay, big risks — and surprisingly little change in regulation and oversight.

Could it all happen again? Yes, says my guest today, and it could be worse.

This hour, On Point: Simon Johnson on Wall Street, one year after the meltdown.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Matthew Bishop, American business editor and New York bureau chief for The Economist. His forthcoming book is called “The Road From Ruin: How to Renew Capitalism and Get America Back On Top.”

And from Washington, D.C., we’re joined by Simon Johnson, professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He is co-founder of the widely-cited website The Baseline Scenario, where he blogs regularly, and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His article on the cover of the September 23 issue of The New Republic, co-authored with Peter Boone, is titled “The Next Financial Crisis: It’s coming–and we just made it worse.”

More links:

President Obama goes to Wall Street today to deliver a big speech on financial regulation, as the Treasury Department releases a 53-page report titled “The Next Phase of Government Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies” (full text).

A detail from the website University of Dreams (summerinternships.com).

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The economy’s still lousy. Unemployment’s high and higher. Starting a career is murder. And guess who’s getting the internships that so often put a foot on the ladder to success?

Well, people with money. A hot business has grown up around paying for hot internships. Unpaid internships. Mom and dad shelling out $5000, $8000, $9000 to buy a summer internship that may get junior started.

Nice, if you’ve got the money. But what about merit? What about opportunity for all?

This hour: When it’s pay-to-play in the American economy.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Gerry Shih, a paid summer intern at The New York Times and author of the article “Unpaid Work, but They Pay for Privilege.”

Sara Lipka, former staff reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, where she covered internships and career services, among many other topics. She currently works on a farm, and blogs for The Atlantic on farming and food.

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. He is the principle author of the EPI’s “The State of Working America,” an analysis of the US labor market released every two years.

Lev Bayer, president and CEO of the Washington Internship Program.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talks about the "Cash for Clunkers" program in Washington, DC, on July 27, 2009. (AP)

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Barack Obama’s Republican Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, is in the middle of an awful lot of American life and economic action lately.

Cash for clunkers? That’s his baby. Billions in stimulus money for new roads and jobs? That’s his, too. Not to mention high-speed rail, a national infrastructure bank, a “passengers’ bill of rights” for air travelers, and what to do about people texting while driving.

The longtime GOP congressman is with us today. This hour, a conversation with the man in the middle — U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood joins us from Washington.  A Republican and former Congressman, he represented the 18th district of Illinois from 1995 until this past January. As U.S. Transportation Secretary he oversees 55,000 employees and a budget of $70 billion. His blog is The Fast Lane.

Sonia Sotomayor waves as she leaves Manhattan Federal Court in New York on Thursday. Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. (AP)

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A lot of emotions this week: political tempers, economic hopes, and a joyous homecoming.

A former president goes to North Korea and comes back with two freed American journalists. The current president stumps for health care reform and economic stimulus, while Congressional town meetings turn ugly.

The Senate, on its way out the door, confirms Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and extends “cash for clunkers.”

Hillary Clinton tours Africa. And a surprising new jobs report has unemployment … falling.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Ron Brownstein, political director for Atlantic Media, columnist for National Journal, and author of “The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America.”

From New York, we’re joined by Betsy Stark, business correspondent for ABC news and an Emmy Award-winner for her investigative reporting.

And from Hanover, N.H., we’re joined by Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

A pending home sale in Palo Alto, Calif. Nationwide, home resales are up 9 percent from January, new home sales have climbed 17 percent and construction, though still anemic, has risen almost 20 percent. (AP)

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Some hopeful signs out there for the economy. The GDP’s plunge has slowed — some economists see it bottoming out, and turning around.

Housing sales are up. Manufacturing — stabilized. Ditto construction. The Obama team hit the airwaves Sunday to sound a note of cautious optimism. The president and vice president hit the road this week to talk up the economy.

But hanging over it all is a dark cloud of unemployment. With jobs still scarce, what kind of recovery, if any, can we expect?

This hour, On Point: Crisis and recovery. Is the economy at a turning point?

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guests:

Joining us from New York is John Harwood. He’s chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, and a political writer for The New York Times. His latest book, co-authored with Gerald Seib, is “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power.”

Joining us from New Haven is Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University. He collaborated with economist Karl Case to produce the Case-Schiller Home Price Index, the most widely used database of housing prices in the U.S. He’s the co-founder and chief economist of Macro Markets, a specialty investment bank that trades in real estate markets. His latest book is “Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism.”

Joining us from Philadelphia is Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s author of “The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and the True Triumph Over the Bold and the New,” and “Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns and Long-Term Investment Strategies.”

Goldman Sachs CEO and Chairman Lloyd C. Blankfein, left, and JPMorgan CEO James Dimon testify before the House Financial Services Committee in February. (AP)

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The big banks of Wall Street almost took down the American economy. They came very, very close. Millions of Americans are still living every day with the consequences.

But last week, the banks — Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase in the lead — announced record rebounds in profit. Giant pre-crash-scale bonuses are slated to follow.

For a public that just opened its treasury and took on many billions in debt to save the banks, this is hard to swallow.

This hour, On Point: Goldman Sachs critic Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Goldman consultant Charles Ellis, and the battle over the banks.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Matt Taibbi, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. His article about Goldman Sachs, “The Great American Bubble Machine” (its subtitle: “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they’re about to do it again”), appeared in Rolling Stone’s July 9-23 issue.

Charles Ellis, founder and now senior adviser of Greenwich Associates, an international strategy consulting firm he founded in 1972. His book, “The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs” came out last October. He has been a consultant to Goldman Sachs for more than 30 years.