Next Wednesday, March 31 at 12:00 noon, the good folks at Revenue Watch Institute will host a lively discussion on how the financial crisis has played out in resource rich nations. Roosevelt Institute Chief Economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Chris Canavan of Goldman Sachs will join two Revenue Watch authors for a panel moderated by journalist Dino Mahtani.

The Revenue Watch Institute is a watchdog fo the responsible management of oil, gas and mineral resources, through sound fiscal frameworks, good governance and reforms to international standards.

The upcoming event at Columbia University marks the release of the Revenue Watch Institute series "Boom, Bust and Better Policy: Crisis Lessons for Resource Rich Countries," a collection of policy papers containing concrete recommendations for resource rich economies in the current climate and future boom/bust cycles.

Questions explored:

• Which policies during the millennium commodities boom produced the most lasting benefits for resource-exporting countries?

• Which countries are suffering the least damage post-crisis, and why?

• How have the extractive industries responded to the economic downturn, and how will the response affect resource rich economies?

• Most importantly, what lessons and guidelines can policymakers and citizens extract from recent events?

The series addresses these questions and examines the economic, social and geo-political impacts of the financial crisis, the five-year commodities frenzy that preceded it, and the price of  recovery that now appears to be underway.

For more info, click here.

It was like the League of Justice gathered on the stage today at New York's Time Warner Center.

Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz, Chief Economist for the Roosevelt Institute, urged us not to give up the fight to fix our broken financial system. Rob Johnson, Director of the Institute's Project on Global Finance, charged a do-nothing Administration with endangering our future as The Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" played in the background. TARP overseer Elizabeth Warren denounced credit card companies for preying on the little guy and plunging hard-working families into debt.

They were from academia. And from the private sector. They were lawyers, judges, former regulators -- and even billionaires, like the famed financier George Soros. They were people like financial analyst Josh Rosner, one of the first to call the subprime mortgage crisis -- and who now says that the securitization market is stalling our economy like a broken car transmission. And Simon Johnson, who warned of a financial 'Doom Cycle' that will spiral out of control if we don't wake up very soon. And Roosevelt fellow Mike Konczal, who forcefully showed how investment banks' risky business puts the entire economy in jeaopardy.

Over and over, the participants warned that the banks -- bigger and more dangerous than ever -- are calling the shots. They have not been reigned in. And they are fighting with everything they've got to do things their way. "We've gone from 'we the people' to 'I the banks'", said Lynn Turner, former Chief Accountant of the SEC.

Rob Johnson made it clear: current proposals floating through Congress don't cut it. "We are at a fork in the road," he said, warning  that we are inevitably headed for another, worse financial crisis if we don't take serious steps to address the critical faults in the system.

Seeing such eminent figures gathered together on stage -- one after the other pointing out how 18 months after the worst crisis since the Great Depression we are more vulnerable than ever --  it would be IMPOSSIBLE to dismiss what they say.

They have given the public, and the Obama Administration, a comprehensive plan to fix what's broken. No one can ever say "We didn't know." Read a full report of their recommendations here.

The question: Obama, are you listening?

**We apologize for the audio difficulties for those who tried to watch the live stream this morning. Fortunately, Bloomberg taped the event and we will have highlights up on New Deal 2.0 very soon.

The Roosevelt Institute is proud to announce a groundbreaking conference -- Make Markets Be Markets -- that will change the debate about financial reform.

Tomorrow, March 3rd from 8:00 am - 11:00 am ET, the Roosevelt Institute will gather some of the nation's leading financiers, economists, and former regulators to release a report outlining critical actions needed to reform the nation's financial system.

Authors include: Elizabeth Warren, Simon Johnson, Roosevelt Institute Director of Financial Reform Initiative Rob Johnson, Frank Partnoy, Lynn Turner, Michael Greenberger, Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal, Josh Rosner, Richard Carnell, Raj Date, and Lawrence White.

Responding to the report are George Soros, Roosevelt Institute Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, Jim Chanos, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bowman Cutter, Peter Solomon, Lynn Turner and Judge Stanley Sporkin.

Portions of the conference will be broadcast by Bloomberg TV and CNN. For more information, please check the website, Make Markets Be Markets.

In a widely-read piece in the Economists' Voice, the Roosevelt Institute's Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson demonstrate how the domino effect of letting Lehman fail brought on the crash. Their argument counters a narrative proposed by Luigi Zingales and others that blames the bailout announcement for the crisis.

The article, "The God that Failed: Free Market Fundamentalism and the Lehman Bankruptcy," debunks the idea that everything was just fine with the economy until Paulsen and Bernanke went to Congress and got the government involved. Ferguson and Johnson show how the ‘efficient markets theory,' a.k.a. ‘free market fundamentalism' has now been thoroughly discredited, and argue for the Keynesian -- and Rooseveltian --position that wise government intervention is essential to our economic health.

However, they issue a warning: "The interactions between the state and market in the money-driven American political system are now too deadly and expensive to tolerate," write Ferguson and Johnson. "They need to be fixed-by aggressive government regulation of both political finance and banks."

From the number of hits their piece is getting, a lot of folks are listening. Let's hope the Obama administration is among them.