The "Too Big To Fail" FAIL

Two years after a massive government bailout that pulled the financial industry back from the abyss, lending is tight and job growth is barely moving. Yet the market for over the counter derivatives is again booming.

Long-time Newsweek economics correspondent Michael Hirsh suggests that Barack Obama's economics team helped the big banks become big winners by bailing them out without holding the institutions accountable to get the economy back on track.

So is it back to business as usual for Citigroup, Bank of America and the rest? Hirsh talks about the reforms that have been put in place and the lack of an ideological debate over the intersection between finance and politics.

Hirsh is currently Chief Economics Correspondent with the National Journal.

LISTEN: MICHAEL HIRSH - CAPITAL OFFENSE

The Other Emerging Market

Much discussion about the future of the global economic picture has been about Asia. But as China and India grab larger slices of the world's economic pie, Brazil is also lining up for a larger piece. The country of nearly 200 million is an agricultural powerhouse that is far closer to true energy independence than the U.S. will be any time in the near future.

Journalist Larry Rohter has covered Brazil for nearly a decade as the South American Bureau chief of the New York Times. Rohter says that Brazil's strength in agriculture, manufacturing and energy places the country in a unique position.

LISTEN: LARRY ROHTER - BRAZIL ON THE RISE

Zakaria on the Innovation Race

Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and host of the CNN program FAREED ZARIA: GPS, is optimistic about the economic crisis... but he doesn't pretend everything is going back to the pre-crash days.

At the Biotechnology International Organization conference in Chicago, Zakaria hosted a panel framed by the Scientific American Worldview magazine "scorecard" of global technology centers. During the panel discussion Zakaria prompted talk of America's strength based on higher education and also raised questions about our capacity to innovate.

Zakaria, who also penned the bestselling book THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD, discusses the changing face of technology, innovation and balance in a 21st century global environment...

LISTEN: FAREED ZAKARIA - BIO 2010

The Naked Economics of Incentives and Health Care

Effective health care policy is all about changing incentives... and the current system is set up to incentivize more expensive care according to Charles Wheelan.

Wheelan compares the U.S. health care system to the mortgage crisis, talks about where the incentives to actually be healthy could be placed and explores the behavioral economic factors that may give doctors good reasons to order bad procedures.

Wheelan is a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and writes "The Naked Economist" column for Yahoo! Finance.

LISTEN: CHARLES WHEELAN - BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS & HEALTH CARE

An Economy Unaccountable

America's accounting system doesn't balance out and the red is threatening to drown out the black. David M. Walker would know: he used to look over the books.

Walker was comptroller general of the United States and CEO of the Government Accountability Office from 1998 to 2008. In that time he reported on the growing fiscal imbalance the country was facing, but saw little action from our leaders to address the issue. Walker was prominently featured in the acclaimed documentary "I.O.U.S.A."

Now, as president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Walker is taking an active role pushing for the change of what he says is a broken system that is "headed for a cliff."

LISTEN: DAVID M. WALKER