Snapler

President Obama hit the nail on the head when he called the economic crisis "a great opportunity," yet so far it is one that America is wasting. Eighteen months ago, Lehman Brothers went bust and trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money was used to save the banking system. It seemed obvious then that a massive overhaul of the economy and the capitalist system that drove it was needed to get us out of the worst mess since the 1930s. We wrote "The Road From Ruin" because we had long believed that although capitalism was the best tool we had to build a prosperous world, it had serious flaws - and we wanted to be part of the debate about how not just to rebuild the system but to build it back better. Today, we are shocked by how little real debate there has been, and even less real change.

True, the President pledged support for the Volcker Plan to separate everyday banking from risky investment banking - although we doubt that alone would prevent another financial collapse, and anyway it is not likely to be passed by this bipartisan, infighting Congress. Obama called for innovation and that's what it will take to fix this broken system, so where are the big new ideas about building a financial sector that can support real job and wealth creation rather than the phantom growth, inflated stock prices and real estate bubbles of the last decade? Even after a systemic meltdown of the financial system, we still have the Fed, the Treasury, the SEC and the CFTC all supposedly watching over the system, but none of them really seeing the full picture or feeling fully responsible. We need regulation that is both more muscular and smarter than the feeble oversight of the past 25 years. Where is the political courage to take on the vested interests in Congress (i.e., campaign dollars) that preserve this fragmented mess?

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