Felix Rohatyn: Rebuilding America

Legendary financier and public “Mr. Fix-it” Felix Rohatyn was at the heart of the effort to rescue New York from fiscal meltdown in its desperate 1970s.

Now, at 80, Rohatyn is calling at a moment of national crisis for Americans to think big — maybe even bigger than President Obama — about rebuilding the country for this century.

Naysayers have always scoffed at huge national investments, he says, from the Louisiana Purchase to the Interstate Highways. But those investments made America great.

This hour, On Point: The long view, with Felix Rohatyn, on rebuilding America to save America.

You can join the conversation. Are you ready to put the shovel in? To dig down and rebuild? What’s your vision? Is it the Obama vision? Something more? Something else? Must government lead the way?Guest:

Felix Rohatyn, author of “Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now.” Former managing director of the investment bank Lazard Freres & Co. and former U.S. ambassador to France under President Bill Clinton, he was chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation of the State of New York from 1975 to 1993.

Robert Puentes, senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.