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.”

 

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.

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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.”

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.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, gestures during his news conference on health care legislation, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2009. (AP)

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Healthcare moves and missile-shield news this week.

In the Senate, Max Baucus finally delivers his proposal on healthcare reform. Questions now: Will he get a single Republican vote? Will enough Democrats sign on to pass or change the bill? Was it worth trying to compromise?

Poland and the Czech Republic will not have American missiles aimed over Russia at Iran. There are better ways to defend, says President Obama — and George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates.

We’ve got trade war talk. Carter on race. 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:

Michael Gerson, columnist for The Washington Post, contributor to Newsweek, and senior research fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation. You can read her latest writings on politics at her “Editor’s Cut” blog.

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

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.”

American International Group office building in New York, Sept. 2008. (AP)

There’s full-on rage in Washington now over the AIG bonuses. In the press, screams of “bloodsucking monsters.”

But behind the cries of outrage and calls for clawback, there’s another tune, too. Calls for criminal prosecution — not just in the AIG case, but across the waterfront of Wall Street destruction.

Investigators are in gear. Subpeonas are out. Are there grounds here for handcuffs and jail cells? Is that too much? Or just right?

This hour, On Point: In the ruins of the money years, we’ll hear the case for and against criminal prosecution.

You can join the conversation. Do you see grounds for criminal prosecution in our great financial meltdown? Where? For what? Do handcuffs have a place here? Or not?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Roger Parloff, senior editor at Fortune magazine. He wrote the cover story “Wall Street: It’s Payback Time” and has been covering the AIG bonuses story.

From Columbia, Missouri, we’re joined by Frank Bowman, professor of law at the University of Missouri. He’s a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for southern Florida specializing in complex white-collar crimes, and former deputy district attorney of Denver, Colorado.

And from Washington, we’re joined by Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa. He and Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana have introduced a bill that would impose a 70 percent tax hike on what they call “excessive executive compensation.” As reported by Politico yesterday, the bill would apply to bonuses given out by any company that has accepted government funds.

More links:

Edward Liddy, the chairman and CEO of AIG, is testifying on Capitol Hill this morning. Time’s Mark Halperin posts Liddy’s prepared remarks here (pdf). Liddy calls some of the bonuses “distasteful” but necessary, given the “cold realities of competition.”

Liddy also has an op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post, in which he writes that “Mistakes were made at AIG, and on a scale that few could have imagined possible.”

A rare bottle of 1995 Dom Perignon being sold for $14,950 in New York on Dec. 13, 2006. The $15,000 bottle is an example of how record Wall Street bonuses trickled through New York City's economy. (AP)

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Ah, late December. For years now, if you were part of America’s financial services industry, this was the time of big, beautiful bonuses.

Gigantic bonuses. Billions in bonuses that built palatial mansions and sucked bright young Americans into Wall Street and numbers crunching. This was compensation so big that it changed the basic distribution of income in this country and built a towering cliff of super-rich money mavens.

And then, the money mavens seemed to drive the whole U.S. economy off a cliff.

Were the incentives wrong? This hour, On Point: Huge pay, huge bonuses, and where they brought us.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Louise Story, business reporter for The New York Times. Her big story last week was headlined “On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real.” She also reports on how banks are trying to find new ways to handle bonuses.

Lucian Bebchuck, professor of law, economics, and finance and director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School. He’s the author of “Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation.”

Steven Kaplan, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago Business School.

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.”

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

Jobseekers look for employment opportunities and work on resumes at WorkSource California in Los Angeles earlier this month. (AP)

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It doesn’t take an economist to see what’s going on with jobs and layoffs these days. Just read the papers.

Unemployment, spiking. Citigroup announcing this week it will cut 50,000 jobs. The Fed says joblessness will go higher next year.

For many, the axe has already fallen. For others, who may never have dreamed of unemployment, the thought now trickles in. Could it be me? Next? Or next year? And what if it is? It’s time to know your rights, your options, your Plan B.

This hour, On Point: Good advice. Making it through the tumbling job market.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Kelly Evans, reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Maurice Emsellem, co-policy director for the National Employment Law Project. He just co-authored a report for the Center for American Progress called “Helping the Jobless Helps Us All: The Central Role of Unemployment Insurance in America’s Economic Recovery.” 

Dustin Swayne, employment counselor at the state-run Tennessee Career Center in Nashville.

Patricia Smith, senior vice president at New Directions, a private Boston-based career consulting center for professionals.

More Links:

Unemployed Workers — an online forum and resource for jobless and underemployed workers, provided by the National Employment Law Project.

CareerOneStop.org, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, “offers career resources and workforce information to job seekers, students, businesses, and workforce professionals.” It features a service locator map for all 50 states, including unemployment insurance filing assistance.

“Will the Safety Net Catch Economy’s Casualties?” — Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times looked at America’s fraying social safety net in last Sunday’s Week in Review.

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.”

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Investigative reporter Danny Schechter has never been quiet about the slick ways of Wall Street and American finance. He won Emmys and was out front on the 1980s S&L crisis.

Now, he’s on fire with the story of American and global financial market meltdown and the machinations that preceded it. The “largest robbery in American history,” he calls it. “Not a bank heist, but a heist by banks.”

Or, as the title of his new book has it, “Plunder.”

And he raises this question: “Where are the prosecutors?”

This hour, On Point: The charge is robbery, on the grandest of scales. Danny Schechter and “Plunder.”

You can join the conversation. Do you see a rip-off here? Do you see a crime? Are we all complicit? Or should key players go to jail? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Danny Schechter, author of “Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal.” A television producer, independent filmmaker, blogger, and media critic, he directed the 2007 documentary “In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts,” and was a winner of two Emmy Awards for his work as a producer on ABC’s 20/20. He is executive editor and blogger-in-chief at Media Channel.

Russ Roberts, professor of economics at George Mason University and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He’s the author of “The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity” (2008) and “The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism” (2006). He hosts the weekly podcast series EconTalk.

A California house under foreclosure. (AP)

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“Contagion” is the hot and ugly word of the week. A finance meltdown hitting markets around the world now, and hitting them hard.

London, Frankfurt, Paris, Brazil, Argentina – Iceland! And reaching into businesses from car showrooms to vacation planners.

But the tap root of this crisis still goes down to the American home and housing market, and the fancy finance that sent home prices and lending practices roaring off the map. Fixing that problem reaches deep into national policy and individual lives.

This hour, On Point: American housing and finance. What went wrong, and how to fix it.

You can join the conversation. What new rules should be in place? Should we make it more difficult to buy a home? Should we stop banks from playing with mortgage securities? Should we put up big firewalls on Wall Street to head off future disasters? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from London is Philip Coggan, global markets editor for The Economist. Its latest piece on the global financial turmoil is headlined “No end in sight.”

Joining us from New York City is Dwight Jaffee, professor of banking, finance, and real estate at the University of California at Berkeley, and a visiting professor at New York University.

Susan Wachter, professor of finance and real estate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

A Washington Mutual Inc. bank branch in West Seattle. (AP)

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It is a major “Holy Cow” moment, from Wall Street to Main Street. And this hour it’s Main Street we have fully in mind. The corner store, the dry cleaner, the carpenter. The car payments and 401K’s of regular Joes and Jills.

Main Street kicked over the apple cart this week, with constituents across the country flooding Congressional in-boxes with fury at the thought of bailing out Wall Street fat cats.

But if the rescue plan looked bad, so does the economic outlook right now — and not just for the fat cats. Now the whole U.S. economy needs a rescue.

We’ll hear this hour from money guru Ben Stein, who says the high finance casino has amounted to grand theft, and from conservative economist Charles Calomiris, who says don’t shackle the money men.

This hour, On Point: Open phone lines to Main Street for your questions, your critique, your concerns now. What do you need to know about what just happened and where we’re headed? What’s your take on the meltdown?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Maura Reynolds, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. She’s been covering the bailout debate on Capitol Hill.

Ben Stein, financial columnist, author, and television commentator. His columns appear in  The New York Times, and he frequently contributes to Fox News. His latest book is “How to Ruin the United States of America.”

Charles Calomiris, professor of financial institutions at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is co-director of the Financial Deregulation Project.

The news ticker on Times Square shows a loss of 778 points on the Dow Jones industrials. (AP)

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Washington’s message to Wall Street yesterday: drop dead.

And Wall Street nearly did. A 777-point loss on the Dow. The biggest one-day point drop in history.

It might have felt good to smack Wall Street one, after the meltdown of the last ten days. Problem is, they are us, too. Pension funds, savings, dreams.

And yet, they’re different. Huge pay packages, golden bonuses, yachts and mansions. Risk that we bear.

This hour, On Point: Fear, panic, and the view from Wall Street now. Plus, we’ll hear from novelist Tom Wolfe, who first unveiled Wall Street’s “masters of the universe.”

You can join the conversation. What next? What now? And what’s your message to Wall Street?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Greg Ip, U.S. economics editor for The Economist. He’s been reporting from Capitol Hill on the Congressional negotiations over the bailout.

With us from New York is Jesse Eisinger, senior writer for Portfolio magazine. He covers finance and Wall Street.

Also from New York, we’re joined by David Beim, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He worked for 25 years in investment banking, and currently serves as a director of a cluster of mutual funds managed by Merrill Lynch.

And with us from New York is Tom Wolfe, novelist and social chronicler, author of “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (1968), “The Right Stuff” (1979), and many other books. His 1987 novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities” brought us the phrase “masters of the universe” to describe Wall Street’s high-rolling hotshots. He’s watching the current meltdown.  His forthcoming novel, about immigration in Miami, is “Back to Blood.”

A screen shows Lehman Brothers' stock evolution in a financial office in Paris, Monday Sept. 15, 2008. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

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Full-blown crisis on Wall Street in the last 48 hours. Odds are you have never lived through a meltdown like the American financial system is up against right now.

“Shaken to its core,” says The Wall Street Journal. Giant Lehman Brothers, headed for bankruptcy. Once mighty, century-old Merrill Lynch — with its famous brawny bull logo — racing for cover with a sale to Bank of America.

More giants trembling. Everybody praying for a taxpayer bailout. The federal government trying to stop doing that.

This hour, On Point: What just happened, why, and where it ends.

What do you see going on here? How do we stop the bleeding? How did the billionaires get it so wrong? Who will take the hit? Join the conversation and tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington, just off a train from New York, is Jon Hilsenrath, chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. His article this morning looks at the Fed’s effort to calm the markets. And on the Journal’s Real Time Economics blog, he and colleague Sudeep Reddy analyze the government’s decision not to bail out Lehman Brothers.

Also with us from Washington is Vincent Reinhart. From 2001-2007, he was director of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Monetary Affairs. He is currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Last month he wrote about “Messages from Merrill’s Misfortunes” for The American magazine.

Joining us in our studio is Allen Sinai, chief global economist, strategist, and president of Decision Economics, Inc. He spent 15 years at Lehman Brothers, where he was chief global economist and managing director of Lehman Brothers Global Economics.

And with us from Belmont, Mass., is Nancy Koehn, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of “Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions.”