Let's just say you wanted to rebuild the economy from scratch. What would you do?

Would you scrap the Federal Reserve, and have a National, Federally owned bank?

Would you let states print their own currency?

Would you lead a standardization on the Euro?

Would you eliminate cash, and go totally electronic?

Seize accounts of CEO's of failed banks who escaped with multi-million (billion?) severance pay/bonuses and try them for treason for starters...

good paying jobs right away, plenty of jobs related to upkeep and running the system.

I actually have always said that FDR kinda screwed up by building highways instead of high speed railways. Highways feed our addiction to oil, railways not so much...

With a healthy dose of green technology

Americans will not use public transportation. Some may, but the lone auto fits into our collective unconscious.

Having said that, I'm all for high speed rail to reduce reliance on airplanes. Also, I think Tesla motors needs the bailout, not GM.

And we need a 100% green car that can go 100 miles on a single charge, and a charge that takes minutes to do.

at long and hard. It takes a lot of oil and energy to just maintain roads, which may not be sustainable in the long-term. Moreover, both water transportation and trains are far more efficient than trucks for shipping, so we should not be subsidizing a less-efficient mode of shipping as we are now. It's a closer call with transportation of people--sometimes trains are more efficient than cars, sometimes the other way around, but I suspect that trains would win out if the costs of road maintenance were factored in. Electric cars are a step forward, but offer no environmental advantage to gas-run engines if we are charging them up from coal-fired power plants.

I'm inclined to think that cars and trucks may not be used much for long-distance transportation in the future. In any case, there needs to national planning for a workable structure, one that takes into account regional resources and differences.

connected to rail hubs as a solution. Compressed air powered passenger vehicles are another solution. The bicycle for the physically able is still another solution. Even the ethanol internal combustion engine vehicle is possible as part of the solution.

However, don't think that trains are maintenance free. Rails distort and have to be straightened periodically, undergrowth has to be cut, and the beds themselves have to be maintained due to weathering. In addition, it takes a lot of steel to make rails and that means coal fired steel plants at this point. We have no alternative except coal fired electricity.

We also need to look at what truck transit is better for, like transportation of perishable foodstuffs. Trucks don't get sidetracked.

We are going to have to start looking at transportation differently in this country, and that's the one sure bet. I doubt the horse and buggy will come back any time soon, but it might be part of an overall solution.

What we do know is that it won't be a one size fits all transit solution.

Thing is, science is our friend, not our enemy in all of this

We've been living so long with science as the enemy that we don't pursue the rational approach sometimes.

I know FDR put money into maintaing the roads we already had and the rest of our infrastructure but he did not promote the Interstate Highway System..

He was really impressed with the German Autobahn.It made it easer for the Germans to move men and equipment during the war.

road building. After WWII he saw the need for a lot of super highways. That was the undoing of the railroad system...which we really need to bring back in addition to the highways.

in case of an attack- I know this because I blocked a highway once waiting to get into the grateful dead parking lot and they read me some law related to it.

the federal penitentiary.... If you're a CEO that made millions of dollars last year while your company lost money, we're confiscating your salary. Welcome to REAL America, where if you fail at something YOU ARE FIRED!!!

but their assets. Use the RICO act against them.
Pick up Elliot Spitzer, dust him off and make him a Special Prosecutor.

Find someone that knows a hell of a lot more about economics then I do.

truckers would need to be re-trained for a different world that relied less on highway transportation.
What of them?

<on edit>:
Not saying we shouldn't expand the rail system.

If we don't engage in infrastructure improvements like this they simply won't have work.

ruling class stays in power and is able to milk us continuously is that they've made us "free slaves" -- we're enslaved to having a job. We have to have a job, making money for them, or we sleep in the street and eat at the soup kitchens. And once we're reduced to that level, it's all but impossible to recover because the longer it goes on, the worse our situation becomes.

It's a *wonderful* scheme --for the ruling class.

So *any* significant change has to be preceded by, and predicated on, protecting the wage-slaves who would be thrown into the street by the change. It's crazy to expect people to support changes that would beggar them.

Right after, "Make my own salary $1 million per year for life. With COLA increases each year of course." LOL

give them back to the American workers. Then I would get rid of those workers that are here on visas and give those jobs back to our workers. Then I would penalized every company and corporation that doesn't hire American workers. Knock off all this 'free trade' bs and let us take care of our own with our own products. After that I got nothing. I am not nor will I ever be any kind of economist.

Nobody needs a billion goddamned dollar net worth. Those who cry "COMM'NISM" to this can kiss my ass until their lips fall off. If you read how coddled the rich are in this nation compared to the stamp-size pittance the middle/working/poor classes get should a disaster occur, you'd agree with me.

And stop teaching laissez-FAIL capitalism in Economics 101 as the standard bearer . .. "how things SHOULD be". It's bullshit, detrimental, makes unfair practice accepted and creates a bunch of know-nothing selfish Republican/Capital L libertarians as a result.

Force commercial banks to sell off their investment/insurance divisions, and prohibit them from engaging in those businesses.

Once the banks were stable again, I'd force hedge funds to divulge just who their customers were, where they were putting there money, and how much was changing hands.

That information would probably lead to me to HEAVILY regulate those funds so as to limit the rampant speculation that helped lead to the current meltdown.

I'd begin to enforce what anti-trust laws were still on the books and pass new, far reaching ones that would, among other things, dismantle the stranglehold on the media by giant corporations.

Then I'd prosecute a case against allowing corporations the rights of personhood, but none of the responsibilities.