Volker surprised at speed of recession

Even those who predicted this collapse have been shocked at the rapid decline around the world. Paul Volker has some excellent ideas including what "innovation" means and where the markets ought to be headed. People want to move back to the regulatory systems that used to exist before the GOP stripped the system and handed it over to Wall Street and the scam artists. If the US wants to force people to base their retirement programs on Wall Street, cleaning up the system to benefit everyone and not just trading houses is a must have.

Speaking to a number of those experts Friday, Paul Volcker, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, cited not only the lack of understanding of the global financial meltdown but the "shocking" speed with which it had spread across the world.

"One year ago, we would have said things were tough in the United States, but the rest of the world was holding up," Volcker told a conference featuring Nobel laureates, economists and investors at Columbia University in New York. "The rest of the world has not held up."

In fact, the 81-year-old former chairman of the Federal Reserve said, "I don't remember any time, maybe even the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast."

He noted that industrial production is falling in countries across the globe faster than in the U.S., one result of the decline caused by the breakdown of unbridled financial markets that operated on a global scale.

"It's broken down in the face of almost all expectation and prediction," he noted.

Volcker didn't offer specifics on how long he thinks the recession will last or what will help start a recovery. But he predicted there will be some lasting lessons from the experience.

"I don't believe it will be forgotten ... and we will revert to the kind of financial system we had before the crisis," he said.

Another excellent point that Volker makes is the need to coordinate between countries. The gamblers of Wall Street received everything they ever dreamed of in recent years and played one country against another. Now it's time to work together, unless we want more of the same scams and economic collapses across the globe.