Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, left, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, at a meeting of G20 finance ministers earlier this month. (AP)

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Wall Street took home astounding pay packages before the economy crashed last fall, and the aftermath was disaster. Critics as big and sober as former Fed chair Paul Volker say crazy pay helped drive the risk that drove the meltdown.

Now, from the G20 to Congress to the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department, there are calls for some limits on the hyper Wall Street pay that helped crash — some say corrupt — the economy.

Will it happen? Will the mega-bonuses be reined in? How? And how much?

This hour, On Point: The New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson on taming Wall Street pay.

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 Gretchen Morgenson, columnist and assistant business and financial editor at The New York Times. She’s editor of the new book, “The Capitalist’s Bible.”

Joining us from Los Angeles is Kevin Murphy, chair of the Department of Finance and Business Economics at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and professor at the USC School of Law. In June, he testified before the House Financial Services Committee on executive pay and risks to the financial system.

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).

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.

Left to right: the corporate headquarters of Bank of America, Citibank, and AIG. (AP)

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In the last year and more, Wall Street’s wild ways took the American economy to the brink of disaster and a ways beyond.

Trillions have been lost. Savings gutted. Jobs and lives turned upside down.

Yesterday, President Obama made his case for a new regulatory blueprint, to try to rebuild some guide rails for American finance. To create a system that works for business and consumers, he said, without choking the engines of American prosperity.

This hour, On Point: Obama and the new regulation of Wall Street – too much, too little, or just right.

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

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Ken Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University. He was chief economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003.

Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine and distinguished senior fellow at the think tank Demos. He’s the author of “Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency” and “The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity.”

William Cohan, a Wall Street insider for 17 years, he worked for Lazard Freres and as a managing director at J.P. Morgan Chase. He’s author of “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street.” He also writes for The Daily Beast.

The cartoon of a dollar note is seen stuck to computer screens at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, on Oct. 10, 2008. (AP)

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Judge Richard Posner is one of the nation’s most prolific legal defenders of free-market economics. Appointed by Ronald Reagan, he’s a “Chicago school” laissez-faire man from way back — a creator and defender of the free-market theory that has guided American thinking and deregulation for thirty years.

And now, Judge Posner is talking about a “failure of capitalism.” About “re-regulating.” This isn’t a recession, he says. It’s a depression. And we have to change.

This hour, On Point: Richard Posner, and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, on capitalism and the U.S. economy now.

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Richard Posner joins us from Chicago. He has been one of the leading lights in the conservative “Chicago School” of economics and of the so-called “Law and Economics” school of thought. He is a prolific author of the law and the marketplace, and his most recent book is called “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression.”

Judge Posner is posting updates on the economic situation and policy responses on a new blog at TheAtlantic.com.

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.”

More links:

Nobel economist Robert Solow reviews “A Failure of Capitalism” in The New York Review of Books. He says the book is “an event,” and notes that if he had made these arguments it wouldn’t be news. But “from Richard Posner, it is.”

Robert Kuttner reviews Posner’s book, along with several others, in The American Prospect. He writes: “conversions would be a little easier to take if the convert had the decency to concede that his earlier mistaken theories had collided with reality. Posner, however, doesn’t look back.” Still, “one should welcome Posner’s book even if it is a reversal without a recantation.”

President Barack Obama, accompanied by, from left, Economic Adviser Christina Romer, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers, walks from the Oval Office to the South Lawn of the White House on March 18, 2009, to make remarks on AIG. (AP)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is standing up today with his latest announcement on how to mop up the ocean of bad debt, toxic assets, at the heart of the current financial crisis.

He’s standing up, of course, into a storm. Geithner says he needs private capital in with public billions to make right the banking and finance mess. Critics are already saying he would reward and restart the same game that got us into this mess. Supporters say, let’s give it a chance.

We’re in uncharted territory here.

This hour, On Point: We’re unpacking the Obama plan for America’s bad banks.

You can join the conversation. Is this it? The way out of the mess in American banking and finance?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

We’re joined in our studio by Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, distinguished senior fellow at the think tank Demos, and a columnist for The Boston Globe. He’s author of “Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency” and “The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity.”

Also with us in our studio is Jeffrey Frankel, professor of capital formation and growth at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and director of the program in international finance and macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton Administration.

And joining us from Park City, Utah, is Steven Kaplan, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago Business School.

Citigroup Center is seen in New York on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. (AP)

America’s big banks — most of them — are still there. The signs are out front. The ads are on TV.

But get down in their books, and some of America’s biggest banks are in serious trouble. Not enough capital — even after massive public bailout billions — to really do business. Zombie banks, they’re being called.

This week, the Obama administration is launching “stress tests” on the banks to see what they need to come fully back to life. And then what? Nationalization? More public billions? Are they too big to fail?

This hour, On Point: Saving the banks.

You can join the conversation. What accountability do you want from banks that are getting your tax dollars? What do you think when you hear “nationalization?”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Stephen Gandel, senior writer at Time magazine. His new piece is “Can Your Bank Pass the Stress Test?”

Joining us from Philadelphia is Franklin Allen. He’s a professor of finance and economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school, and co-director of Wharton’s Financial Institutions Center.

With us from New York is Roy Smith. He’s a professor of entrepreneurship and finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and a former partner at Goldman Sachs.

And with us from Washington DC is Joe Klein, columnist for Time magazine and author of “Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid.” He’s also the author (as Anonymous) of the novel “Primary Colors,” a fictionalized account of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1992.

More Links:

The Wall Street Journal explains the basics of “nationalization.”

Clockwise from top left: The New York City skyline (photo: KristinaMay/Flickr), the Phoenix skyline (photo: im_me/Flickr), the Renaissance Center, Detroit (photo: nicole st. john/Flickr), and San Francisco (pbo/Flickr)

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Big economic events — like the one we’re in now — change the map of America. They make winners and losers. They change where we live and work and what we do.

Acclaimed urban theorist Richard Florida says that on the other side of this economic bust, America’s economic geography will be different. Some cities, towns, regions will roar back to new prosperity. Others, he says, may find a reshaped economy passing them by. Some may be history.

This hour, On Point: Richard Florida on the new geography of success in America — after the bust.

You can join the conversation. How do you see the crash reshaping the nation? When the dust settles on our financial bust, what industries, cities, regions do you think will rise? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Toronto is Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and professor of business and creativity at the University of Toronto Business School. He’s the author of the international bestsellers “The Rise of the Creative Class” and “Who’s Your City?” His new article, on the cover of The Atlantic’s March issue, is “How the Crash Will Reshape America.”

Joining us from Detroit is Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr. He has served as interim mayor since September, following the resignation of Kwame Kilpatrick, and is running against 14 other candidates in the special mayoral primary election tomorrow.

A pigeon sits atop Bank of America branch sign in Los Angeles on Friday, Jan. 16, 2009. (AP)

U.S. banks are facing a worst-case scenario, teetering on the verge of massive failures.

Three have gone down so far this year. That’s one per week. And the cost to bail out the industry could reach trillions — that’s with a “T.” Some formerly taboo words — like “nationalization” — are being tossed around. It worked for Sweden. But the USA?

Gretchen Morgenson, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times business columnist, looks with us at the road ahead.

This hour, On Point: bailouts, bad banks, and cram-downs. What’s next for the banking industry?

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guest:

From New York we’re joined by Gretchen Morgenson, business columnist and assistant business and financial editor at The New York Times.  She’s been writing extensively about banks, mortgages, and economic crisis, most recently in a piece headlined “The End of Banking as We Know it.” She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her coverage of Wall Street.

Police stand guard as workers gather in a standoff over a wage dispute at the gate of Jianrong Suitcase Factory in Dongguan, China, on Dec. 19, 2008. (AP)

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Has any year ever begun with more of the world’s fate and fortune riding on China? Maybe not.

Thirty years ago last month, Deng Xiaoping put China on the path to its own brand of market capitalism. It’s been an explosion ever since. Now, at the dawn of 2009, China’s having trouble: Exports down, factories closing, millions losing jobs.

But more than ever, the world is tied into what China does next. Obama’s big stimulus? Chinese billions would make it happen. And then there’s China’s own stability.

This hour, On Point: China’s next move.

You can join the conversation. Is this just a Chinese hiccup? Will China refuel the U.S. economy? Will U.S. consumers restart the Chinese miracle?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Beijing is Anthony Kuhn, Beijing correspondent for NPR. See an archive of his recent reports from China at NPR.org.

From Shanghai we’re joined by James Areddy, Shanghai correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.  Last month the Journal reported on rising unrest as China’s economy falters.  He was with us in Shanghai last April.

Also from Shanghai is Shen Dingli, professor and executive dean of Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies. He’s also a fellow at the Asia Society, a global organization based in New York.

John Maynard Keynes, right, with Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White at the inaugural meeting of the International Monetary Fund's Board of Governors in Savannah, Georgia, March 8, 1946.

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Economist John Maynard Keynes was a giant of the 20th century — until he wasn’t.

In the Great Depression and beyond, Keynesian economics had government rolling out massive spending to stimulate slumping economies. Then Keynes fell out of fashion, and the free market gurus ruled.

Now, in the rubble of the go-go market years, Keynes is back — big-time. Obama’s team is talking about maybe a trillion-dollar stimulus package. That’s Keynesian on a grand scale.

Economist Robert Skidelsky is the great biographer and master of Keynes. This hour, On Point: Skidelsky on Keynes.

You can join the conversation. Are we all Keynesian now — ready, with Barack Obama, to pour on the economic stimulus? The government spending? Do we have a choice? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Joining us from London is Lord Robert Skidelsky, emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Warwick, director of the Moscow School of Political Studies, and a trustee of the Manhattan Institute. He is the preeminent biographer of John Maynard Keynes, having published a three-volume work, now condensed into a single volume: “John Maynard Keynes, 1883 to 1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman.” Director and adviser to mutual and hedge funds and enterprises from New York to Europe to Moscow: Janus Capital, the Greater Europe Fund, and Russian telecom giant Sistema. His columns and essays appear in print around the world, and he is active in the British House of Lords.

Read an excerpt from Skidelsky’s biography of Keynes at Amazon.com.

More links:

Skidelsky’s latest pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Prospect magazine all look at Keynesian thinking in the context of the current economic crisis.

A home owned by Bernard Madoff in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday, Dec. 15, 2008. (AP)

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The Federal Reserve Bank cutting interest rates to near zero is the big headline today. But the eye of the world is still fixated on the $50 billion scandal, the alleged swindle, the Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff.

It’s the stuff of children’s rhymes: Bernie Madoff, made off with the money. It’s the stuff of tragedy, for the families and charities ruined in the scam. It’s the stuff of blind greed, and astounding oversight failures at the S.E.C.

A century ago, Chesterton said: “There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.” Now, a not-so-small mob of investors is in big trouble. And the S.E.C — and American system — have a huge black eye. And it’s still unfolding.

This hour, On Point: The apparent crime of the century, and what it means. The Madoff scandal.

You can join the conversation. Did you, or your rich uncle, lose a bundle with Madoff? Are you seeing the ripple-effect of the crime of the century? How could this happen?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Amir Efrati, staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He’s one of the lead reporters on this unfolding story.

Also from New York, we’re joined by Jesse Eisinger, a senior writer for Portfolio magazine covering finance and Wall Street.

And with us in our studio is Mitchell Zuckoff, professor of journalism at Boston University and author of “Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend.”

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich departs his home in Chicago, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008. (AP)

U.S. Senate to Detroit: Drop dead — or good luck to you.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to the world: Obama’s seat is for sale.

It’s not easy for one week to contain the implications of this week’s news. No bailout for the U.S. auto industry — unless the White House still steps up. Unions wouldn’t budge. Neither would Senate Republicans.

In Chicago, a governor makes “bleeping” a front-page word, and allegedly tried to sell the president elect’s Senate seat.

Jobs are still dropping. Markets quiver.

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

You can join the conversation. Should the White House step up with the money to save Detroit? Will Blagojevich taint Obama? Are the job losses cutting close to home?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Laura Washington, columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times.

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

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

A realty sign stands outside a new home for sale in southeast Denver on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008. (AP)

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Wall Street got its bailout. Detroit now has its backers.

What about the little homeowner whose mortgage is sinking the family budget? The millions and millions of homeowners facing woe and foreclosure, whose collective problem is drowning the national economy?

There is still a raging debate over whether homeowners should get a lifeline at all. But plans are being made. Super-low mortgage interest rates or new tax breaks may be on the way.

But for whom? New homeowners? Struggling homeowners? Can we afford this?

This hour, On Point: Bailing out the home-owning world.

You can join the conversation. Would bargain-basement mortgage interest rates and foreclosure relief turn your town, your life, the national economy around? Do you want your failing neighbors to get a helping hand from Washington? Do you want a piece of that pie, too?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Michael Corkery, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering housing and home-building. His most recent piece, looking at the Treasury Department’s proposal to push down mortgage rates, was headlined “Lower Rates Help Sell Houses, but Market Faces Broader Ills.”

Also from New York, we’re joined by Dwight Jaffee, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently visiting at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

And from Wellesley, Mass., we’re joined by Karl Case, professor of economics at Wellesley College. A national authority on the economics of housing and real estate, he collaborates with economist Robert Shiller to produce the Case-Schiller Home Price Index, the most widely used database of housing prices in the U.S.

Author Katy Lederer

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“Money is a kind of poetry,” the great Wallace Stevens once wrote.

Lately, the great American money centers have looked, if anything, like tragic poetry. Meltdown. Mayhem. Fall from grace.

Katy Lederer was a poet in the belly of the beast — an Iowa Writers’ Workshop grad who for six years worked for one of the world’s biggest hedge funds. While they bet billions, she took notes — and wrote poetry.

Now, she’s quoting Goethe, Galbraith, Nietzsche and Kant from the land of leverage and the lush life.

This hour, On Point: The hedge-fund poet, and verse in the ruins of high finance.

You can join the conversation. Masters of the universe, did you find poetry in the bubble? In the billions? What do we learn when we open the books on money?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Katy Lederer joins us from Atlanta. She is the author of the poetry collections “The Heaven-Sent Leaf” and “Winter Sex,” and the memoir “Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.” She worked from 2002 to 2008 as a recruiter at D.E. Shaw, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds. She is currently a poetry editor of Fence magazine, a literary and arts journal.

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

Here are two poems by Katy Lederer, from her new collection, “The Heaven-Sent Leaf”:

Me, a Brainworker

Me, a brainworker toiling in pristine white hallways.
Abnormal, aboriginal, endemic to this site.
Some people sell their wares outside.
In the pulsating light of Times Square they are singing.
In their noses and nipples, the glinting of rings.
Let us call them unoriginal.
Let us call them all these awful things.
The busy unoriginals are throwing out their trash,
But on this lovely parchment they are writing priceless poems.
They suppose that by such rendering they’ll be remembered after death.
They suppose that by such influence their souls will sing eternally.
In the hallways, we are killing time,
Its blood now thick and lurid on the freshly painted walls.

. . .

The Heaven-Sent Leaf

The speculation of contemporary life.
The teeming green of utterance.

To feel this clean,
This dream-éclat.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit.
As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.

Let us think of the soft verdure of the spirit of this age as now inside
           of us and swollen by spring rain.
To imagine oneself as a river.

To imagine oneself as a stretch of cool water,
Pouring into a basin or brain.

And if one knows one is not free?
One crawls from the back of the head to the river

And places one’s pinky oh so cautiously in.

“Me, a Brainworker” and “The Heaven-Sent Leaf” by Katy Lederer, reprinted from “The Heaven-Sent Leaf” © 2008 by Katy Lederer. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. www.boaeditions.org

Paul Krugman on Oct. 13, 2008, after winning the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. (AP)

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Paul Krugman got the Nobel Prize for economics in October, and it’s been nothing but economic mayhem ever since.

There is no cause and effect there, but the prize has given Krugman an even bigger soapbox than usual in the urgent global conversation over how to handle the crisis.

As Barack Obama heads into office, Krugman is calling more loudly than ever for a massive federal stimulus for the U.S. economy, and thereby the global economy. A new New Deal. Bigger than FDR’s.

This hour, On Point: Economist, columnist, and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, on an economy still in crisis.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Paul Krugman is an economist at Princeton, a columnist for The New York Times (where he also writes a blog), and winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. His new book is “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.”

Financial historian Niall Ferguson knows humanity’s long trail of boom and bust cycles. But he is hardly buried in the past.

In the long run-up to today’s crisis, Ferguson was warning loud and clear that we were headed for trouble. He called it early, and he called it right.

Now, Ferguson is sizing up the mess we’re in. Bottom line guess, he says: we’re headed for ten percent unemployment and five-plus years of hard times.

On the other side, the world could look quite different. But the U.S., he says, still has some good cards to play. Saving graces.

This hour, On Point: Niall Ferguson, and the big view of the mess we’re in.

You can join the conversation. Big picture, what do you see going on in this economic crisis? Big hiccup? End of an era? Passing of the crown of superpower?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Joining us in our studio is Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard University, professor at Harvard Business School, senior research fellow at Oxford University, and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. A contributing editor of The Financial Times, his books include, “Empire,” “Colossus” and “The War of the World.” His latest is “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.” His article titled, “Wall Street Lays Another Egg,” appears in the current issue of Vanity Fair.

A Ford plug-in hybrid Edge cruises on Capitol Hill, Jan. 17, 2007. (AP)

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The American auto industry is on its knees, with its hand out.

GM, Ford, and Chrysler want a bailout now, and they want it fast. They’re hemorrhaging cash. GM says it will be unable to pay its bills by the end of the year. That’s six weeks from now.

The flailing Big Three have asked for many billions from the federal government. Congress appears sympathetic. But should Detroit be bailed out? Or allowed to go bust, and rebuild on new terms?

How much of the U.S. economy can or should the U.S. government float?

This hour, On Point: Dire straits. Should Washington bail out Detroit?

You can join the conversation. What do you say? Yea or nay? And why? Can we afford to bail out Detroit? Can we afford not to? Does it make sense?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Micheline Maynard, business reporter for The New York Times. Her article on the front page of this morning’s Times is “G.M.’s Troubles Stir Question of Bankruptcy vs. a Bailout.” She’s been blogging about her personal switch to a new hybrid car at NYTimes.com’s “Green Inc.”

Matthew Slaughter, associate dean and professor of international economics at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.

Susan Helper, professor of economics at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and research affiliate for the International Motor Vehicle Program at MIT.

More Links:

The Wall Street Journal examines the politics of the bailout debate. For a scathing indictment of Detroit’s way of doing business, see Thomas Friedman’s column in yesterday’s New York Times. Meanwhile, David Greising at The Chicago Tribune opines that Detroit deserves a piece of the bailout action.

Dr. Henry Kaufman. Photo: Art Silverman/NPR

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Amidst rising home foreclosures and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Americans are asking, what can be done?

Now that blind faith in unfettered markets, by the likes of Alan Greenspan and a generation of free market hot shots, looks fatally misguided — who can we trust?

How about Henry Kaufman — the Wall Street sage who predicted back in 1990 that we’d pay a heavy price for Wall Street’s recklessness. Back then he was known as Dr. Doom, but he was right.

This hour, On Point: Henry Kaufman’s plan for a new economic era, and his faith that this too shall pass.

You can join the conversation. Are you feeling this economic downturn? Are you worried about the future? Do you see hope on the horizon? Share your thoughts.

-Anthony Brooks, guest host

Guest:

Henry Kaufman joins us from New York. He is president of Henry Kaufman & Company, Inc., an economic and financial consulting firm. He spent 26 years at Salomon Brothers, most recently as managing director, and was a key player on Wall Street in the 1970s and 1980s. His dire economic projections earned him the nickname “Dr. Doom.” He’s the author of “On Money and Markets: A Wall Street Memoir.”

(AP Photo)

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Sarah Palin may have had a $150,000 shopping spree at Nieman Marcus and Saks in the last couple months, but most Americans most definitely have not.

American retailers are hurting, badly. And the economic storm has not even fully hit.

Analysts are predicting a “retail Katrina” that will shutter wide swaths of stores coast to coast as the consumer-driven economy goes south.

Linens-n-Things, already gone. Many more empty malls and dead big boxes, they say, on the way.

This hour, On Point: American retail, going down. And what will we do with all those empty stores?

You can join the conversation. Are you seeing the lights go out in your local mall? What’s going to turn them back on? Tell us what you’re seeing.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Seattle is Patricia Edwards. She’s a retail analyst and chief investment officer for Storehouse Partners.

From New York City we’re joined by Jonathan D. Miller, a real estate consultant and principal author of “Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2009,” a report just released by the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

And from Oberlin, Ohio, we’re joined by Julia Christensen, author of the new book “Big Box Reuse,” which documents community reuse of vacated commercial space. She’s tracking K-Marts in Buffalo and Charlotte, and a Wal-Mart in Laramie, Wyoming, all turned into schools. You can read the introduction here (pdf).