The latest ABC News article about the worst financial crisis is entitled: “Keeping the Titanic Afloat: World Leaders Meet to Discuss Financial Crisis”. Talk is good, but a long-term solution needs to be found. Also, it’s not good if this financial crisis is being compared to the Titanic because the Titanic couldn’t be saved: it sunk. The big question, then, becomes: will we be able to recover from the second worst financial crisis in recent memory?

According to Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University and a former IMF official, “It’s a very important symbol and symbolism is important because one of the issues we are dealing with right now is a general collapse in confidence. Coordinated actions on this front can bring about more changes. The least constructive thing that the G-20 can do right now is to assign blame”. The big question is: how will confidence be restored? Also, instead of blaming, the G-20 leaders should find creative, constructive solutions.

In his weekly radio address, President Bush said that “We must understand that government intervention is not a cure-all. While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today’s problems is sustained economic growth. And the surest way to that goal is free markets and free people”. This is typical GOP ideology: laissez-faire economics.

According to ABC political analyst Rick Klein, “There’s a real danger that if they don’t get enough done in here and they don’t take enough big substantive steps that the markets will respond negatively and say, “This is just words. This is not action”. Action is required.

According to Wing Thye Woo, a Brookings Institute senior fellow, “Now is not the time to build (the) Titanic. Now is the time to keep it from sinking”.