Head In The Sand Economics

Tom Gjelten in for Tom Ashbook

Top economist Simon Johnson says all the fiery rhetoric in Washington over the debt crisis is doing nothing to fix the problem.

European governments have offered Greece another bailout. But many economists think it will only postpone an inevitable default.

Bankers are fretting that Spain or Portugal might be next.

And the United States is facing its own debt dead-line, with politicians unable to agree on the way forward.

Are we in danger of slipping back into another global financial crisis, one even more dangerous than the one that scared us so in two thousand eight? Two popular economists say it depends on whether we've learned the right lessons.

This hour On Point: Avoiding a new economic meltdown.

-Tom Gjelten
Guest

Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He's also the author of “13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.”

A. Michael Spence, a Nobel prize-winning economist, chairman of the Commission on Growth and Development and a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also author of “The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World.”