Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman (2008, Economics) and former Vice President Al Gore (co-recipient with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 2007 Peace Prize) contributed wonderful op-ed pieces in the New York Times (see here and here) which, taken together, provides a way forward out of the economic malaise along with solutions to America's energy problems and to the global climate crisis.
Their ideas, taken together, provide a radical change from the way the economy has been working if the idea of an economy is supposed to be about the efficient production of goods and services which improves the standard of living in a fair and equitable manner. The only thing our economy has been about recently is the creation of financial instruments designed to profit from debt and inflation, which produce nothing except profits for hedge funds and investment banks. They were purely exploitative and when they imploded, as they were bound to do, it created a disaster which everyone, except those who profited from them, must now deal with at a terrible cost.
Despite the revisionist history now being re-written by various right wing think-tanks, Dr. Krugman (along with most main-stream economists) is of the belief that FDR's New Deal brought real relief to most Americans. In Krugman's view the mistake Roosevelt made was a return at the wrong time to conservative budget principles when he cut spending and raised taxes after the '36 election, which precipitated another economic collapse that drove unemployment to double digits.
The economic lesson here "is the importance of doing enough," according to Dr. Krugman. "F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy."
Cleary, the government cannot risk not doing enough. The question is how best to apply the fiscal stimulus measures the Obama administration is
