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

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

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

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

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"