The Bailout
The head of a congressional panel overseeing the $700-billion federal bailout program says lawmakers need to “take a very hard look” at how banks have used the money. The panel, led by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, released a report today that strongly criticizes the Treasury Department for its handling of the financial rescue plan. Washington Post reporter Binyamin Appelbaum guides us through the report.
Regulating the Markets
How do we restore trust in America’s financial markets? We speak with Jesse Eisinger, who wants to throw out the current regulatory system and start from scratch. He proposes adopting the “Twin Peaks” model, which has worked well in other countries. Eisinger is Senior Writer for Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine, where he covers finance and Wall Street.
Voices of the Great Depression
How bad was the Great Depression? Here & Now producer Andrea Shea presents a sound montage of people’s experiences during the most economically challenging moments of the 1930’s.
No Nukes
Fear of nuclear weapons seems like something out of the Cold War, but the nuclear threat has actually grown since then, so much so that even foreign policy hawks like former U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz have started arguing for a nuclear free world. So, has the moment come to make the pipe dream real? We’ll speak with Jan Lodal, former senior Defense Department and White House official in the Nixon, Ford, and Clinton administrations. He and co-author Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution Fellow who’s been advising Obama on foreign policy, have written an essay laying out the route to a world without nuclear weapons.
The Week in Sports
The NFL playoffs, BCS championship game, slumping NBA champions and more: we look at the week in sports with Bill Littlefield, host of NPR’s “Only A Game.”
Entertainment 2009
Entertainment companies are banking on big names like “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and Bruce Springsteen to lure consumers to spend money. We see what’s in store for the year ahead in entertainment with Christopher Farley, Entertainment Editor for the Wall Street Journal.
