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

Bubbles and Bad Fixes

Investment "bubbles" make a lot of people rich. When the bubbles burst a lot of people lose money. Most recently, many of the losers didn't even know they were part of an overinflated bubble. Or more accurately, many people did not realize that one bubble was related to so much else.

Economist Craig Thomas thinks that a true recovery to the system of markets in the U.S. will depend more on a natural balance of the system than incentives created by government fixes.

Thomas was Director of Research for Citi Property Investors, Citigroup's private equity real estate arm. Thomas talks with about how the housing market came to be such a mess, and what he sees as proper maintenance of the "econosphere."

LISTEN: CRAIG THOMAS - THE ECONOSPHERE

Old Rules and New Rules for Recovery

With a Wall Street recovery making some feel better about the economy, are jobs soon to follow?

Traditional wisdom might suggest that a boost in production by American companies would ease the swelling of unemployment figures. Yet, although many economists are saying the recession ended in the summer, still others are predicting double-digit unemployment to stick around for awhile. New York times national economics correspondent Peter S. Goodman says that the old rules might not apply to the current situation.

Goodman discusses concerns over the GDP in relation to the federal debt, the concept of a "jobless recovery" and suggests some ways American manufacturing can look for a more sustainable type of growth.

LISTEN: PETER S. GOODMAN - THE END OF EASY MONEY

Cheating on the Free Market

New York Times business journalist and columnist Gretchen Morgenson has written about the influence of the banking and investment industry during the financial crisis and the behind-the-scenes discussions made by major players.

Morgenson talks about "creative destruction," the level of "freedom" in the American free market and a lack of reform for the financial industry.

LISTEN: GRETCHEN MORGENSON - READING THE CAPITALIST'S BIBLE

A Communist Ponzi Scheme

Overreaching military expansion. Sudden bank runs revealing a shaky economic foundation. Rampant cronyism. Sound familiar?

Princeton professor of Contemporary History Stephen Kotkin thinks so. Kotkin has notes all these factors in the not-so-distant history of Easter Germany, Poland and Romania.

On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kotkin unpacks the factors that led to what seemed to be an abrupt unraveling of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 80s and early 90s.

LISTEN: STEPHEN KOTKIN - UNCIVIL SOCIETY

Young Money: Gen Y Consumers

Consumer power is shifting as a generation of under-30 spenders take control of the marketplace. Consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow examines how young people are spending money differently than their parents. Yarrow is the co-author of GEN BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail.

LISTEN: KIT YARROW

Kurt Andersen and the Reset Button

What exactly is the United States going through? Have we seen it before? Is it like the Great Depression? Is it like the end of the Roman Empire?

Kurt Andersen thinks we are at a point in time when political, economic and technological cycles have collided. As we are at a unique point in history, Andersen says, the nation is also offered a unique opportunity. He lays out those opportunities his book RESET: HOW THIS CRISIS CAN RESTORE OUR VALUES AND RENEW AMERICA. Andersen, bestselling author and co-founder of Spy magazine, based his book on the response to a Time magazine cover story titled "The End of Excess."

LISTEN: KURT ANDERSEN, RESET

Superpower Problems

It’s now (and has been) apparent that the true impact of globalization on Americans is more than just cheap stuff and a reshaped concept of domestic manufacturing jobs. In other parts of the world information access, the rise of non-state entities and many other forms of “decentralization” are creating new challenges for long-standing industrial and political powers.

Will a growing trend of decentralization start to change our idea of the United States? Has it already? These are some of the issues tackled by Paul Starobin in his book AFTER AMERICA: Narratives for the Next Global Age. In the book, Starobin suggests that current organizational trends and issues need to change for the U.S. to adapt to the changing world.

LISTEN: PAUL STAROBIN, AFTER AMERICA

Joe Queenan Takes Aim

Joe Queenan has a chip on his shoulder. This is apparent to those who have sampled his writing, which pulls no punches in criticizing art, culture, public figures and just about anything else. In his memoir CLOSING TIME, Queenan turns the focus to his harrowing childhood, part of which was spent in a housing project in Philadelphia.

In this interview Queenan talks about his background but more about how in the depts of the financial crisis those that are left out of the conversation are the poor. He reserves a fair amount of venom for a culture he feels gives those hit hardest by financial stress the least amount of concern.

INTERVIEW: JOE QUEENAN'S "CLOSING TIME"