From a few weeks ago, a roundtable discussion:

Nouriel Roubini (NYU) was one of the earliest and most persistent economists warning us of the housing bubble leading to our present financial calamities. Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia) has dealt with financial crisis over a quarter century in all parts of the world. Felix Rohatyn is famed as the man who saved NYC from its financial crisis of the 1970s as well as a leading financier, diplomat, and voice for public responsibility. This conversation, moderated by Charlie Rose, among these three experts will enable the public to join in a unique reasoned and detailed discussion of the origins and perhaps solutions to the current upheaval.

Transcript and audio are available.

From the archive:

Roubini believes 50 percent might default.

Read this. Start at page 11.

Some excerpts:

NOURIEL ROUBINI: ...essentially, regulators were asleep at the wheel. You know, the ideology in Washington for the last few years has been one of self-regulation of financial market, it means no regulation, of relying on market discipline, but when there is euphoria, mania, and irrational exuberance, there is really no market discipline, overreliance on these internal risk management models, but as the previous CEO of Citigroup, Chuck Prince, said, “When the music is playing you’ve got to dance,” and nobody is listening to the internal risk managers and everybody is taking too much risk and then reliance on rating agencies that had major conflicts of interests because they were being paid by those people they were supposed to be rating.

India, China, Brazil, Russia, emerging markets, not just those, those in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, in emerging Europe. And the trouble is when there is a severe recession in the United States, it’s painful in U.S., people lose jobs, but you have unemployment benefit, you have a welfare net, but if there is a severe recession in Africa, that’s a difference between being able to live and starve...

JEFFREY SACHS: But we had general view, leave things alone, we don’t have to pay taxes, we don’t have to look after our infrastructure, we don’t have to look after our poor, we don’t have to look after our health system, so it’s not completely a coincidence that we face big problems in so many areas, not only the financial markets.

All of this pessimism is building my optimism, I have to say. I think that two things are important to emphasize. One is we remain, by far, the most productive and flexible and technologically advanced economy in the world. This housing bubble didn’t end that. The mismanagement of this miserable administration didn’t end that. The lack of focus of what we ought to be doing on climate change and all the rest. We invented hybrid technology; Japan capitalized on it. We invented so many of the technologies that will be needed for the future that we’re not deploying right now because we have no strategy.

And I think it’s important for also of us to understand, this city there’s no doubt about it, but in our country there is a lot of mistake—we’ve been told such nonsense for so long in this country about what happens if you charge taxes or if you have public health care or if you do other things…the terrible truth is that, because of this slide, the U.S. now ranks twenty-fifth in the world in life expectancy and infant mortality rates. Can you imagine what we have allowed to happen here, this kind of slide, whereas countries like Sweden or Norway or Denmark…have vibrant market economies, but they take care of their babies so they don’t die. And that’s very straightforward to do, because the technologies are quite wonderful if people are protected and have a way to do that.

I think the issue for the extreme poor is really when we’re going to realize that their fate and our fate are intertwined, not through a financial crisis but through our common security and this is going to require a different vision of how the world fits together that I think can come soon and quickly and is absolutely vital.

It's an exciting and terrifying time to be alive.

-janelane