| former Fed reserve chair Paul Volker interviewed by Charlie Rose. Excerpt from about 28 minutes in: |
Rose: Is there something about this great American experiment that makes you confident that we will come out [of this financial crisis] OK? Is it somehow that we will just make this happen, rather than any specific thing?
Volcker: We will get out of it. The basic economy interestingly enough until recently was quite strong.
We've discovered that we're more competitive than we thought we were in a lot of manufacturing industries. We are still innovative. We're still the leaders in high tech. I hope we remain that way.
What we need is fewer financial engineers, and more electrical engineers, and chemical engineers and civil engineers to take care of our infrastructure. We've poured too much of our capital into false castles in the financial world. Now that's going to change, I think. ...
The magnetism of Wall Street is going to be reduced, obviously. And I think that's not a bad thing, that we'll get this talent in other areas of the economy. |