A 'jobless recovery'? We don't think so.

In the wake of staggering double-digit job loss figures, the Roosevelt Institute's top economists, historians and other public thinkers are summoning the spirit of FDR to propose ideas for job creation in a special 10-part series, "Navigating the Jobs Crisis."

The new series comes on the heels of dreary job-loss numbers released on Friday showing that more than 10.2% of Americans, and 15.7% of African-Americans, are out of work -- a 26-year high for this country. Most contributors to series, which will begin tomorrow on New Deal 2.0,  advocate for the government to do much more, including direct job creation as we saw during the New Deal era.

"FDR knew that a recovery without jobs was not a recovery at all - but that same determination to create jobs for Americans who need them seems missing in the response to today's crisis," said Andrew Rich, President of the Institute. "The Roosevelts understood that work brought a kind of basic dignity to people during hard times, and they carried out those values in the policies they implemented."

The special series begins on Thursday, Nov. 12, and will run through Wednesday, Nov. 25. We hope that the project stirs thinking and debate as the country heads into Thanksgiving.

Contributors to "Navigating the Jobs Crisis" include:

• Randall Wray, senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, who writes: "What perplexes me is that we have been here before, and we know how to solve the unemployment problem: create jobs through a new, New Deal-style jobs program."

• James K. Galbraith, an economist and professor at University of Texas, who warns: "Can anything be done now? Well yes, technically: the same steps that could have been taken in January 2009 could be taken in January 2010. But they won't be, because for the moment we are seeing the inventory bounce, a productivity surge, real GDP growth, and other ‘good signs.'"

• Majora Carter, a leading national expert on green-collar jobs, who notes: "One of the reasons our country is the world leader in per capita incarceration and recidivism rates, is that jobs in the illegal economy are easier to find than legitimate entry-level jobs in some areas. By ‘some areas' I mean ghettos, and by ‘ghettos' I mean anywhere poor people are concentrated."

Eliot Spitzer explains how the White House defense of the status quo will give Republicans powerful ammunition in the 2010 elections.

Few things are as potent in politics as calling for change at a moment of fundamental dissatisfaction with the status quo. Nobody should know this better than the current White House. Gauzy words describing the possibilities for change are always more comforting than defending the current dire straits. That is why -- in addition to all the substantive arguments -- the current White House plan for banking reform is so troubling.

Let us fast forward a couple of months. Momentary GDP pops notwithstanding, the economy next year is likely to be in pretty sad shape. Consumer spending is sagging; foreclosures are still climbing (and may surge as ARMs re-set); unemployment is likely to be hovering in the 9.5-10.0 range; federal deficits and state deficits will be soaring; and Goldman profits will still be setting new records.

Added to this toxic political brew will be a new, and perhaps counter-intuitive, but highly successful political attack from the RIGHT: break up the banks. Imagine this: by next spring, an intellectual consensus will have emerged that the concentration in the banking sector that developed from the 1980s until the crash of '08 was misguided. Voices as disparate as Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, meta- investor George Soros, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page will be in agreement on this point.

A few brave souls on the Right -- recognizing that the Republican Party has been bereft of ideas in its attacks on President Obama -- will then try to re-define a populist, conservative attack by asserting that the White House has been captured by Wall Street. Real populism and change, they will argue, will come from the Republican, not the Democratic, party.

The power of such an attack from the Right should not be underestimated. There will be a huge first mover advantage that goes to the candidates who grab the real banner of attacking the structure of Wall Street as having been the root of the crash of '08. We Democrats are spending way too much time wringing our hands over the new, "reformed" structure of regulation, and not nearly enough focusing on restructuring the banks. Congress continues to mediate the intramural battle among regulators who are defending turf in the next regulatory flow chart. Yet the real debate should be how to take the big banks and make them smaller: how to peel off proprietary trading and other high-risk endeavors that are now being funded and guaranteed by taxpayers.

In addition, there is too much attention being paid to the one recent idea thrown into the mix by the White House: how to place a tax on big financial institutions after the next crash, so that they shoulder the cost of the next bail out. The notion that a levy on surviving big banks when the next crisis hits can pay for the bail out seems wrong in at least three ways:

• First, applying a levy at the moment of crisis will merely accentuate a down turn. At a time when we will presumably need more liquidity and lending to revive a stalling economy, the federal government is going to apply a significant tax to healthy institutions capable of lending? Not likely.

• Second, having the healthy institutions cover the losses of the sicker institutions takes us right back into the land of moral hazard. Profligate, risk taking entities will be bailed out by those that exercised caution.

• Third, any downdraft significant enough to bring "too big to fail" institutions to the brink of the precipice is likely to be broad based enough so that virtually all the other major institutions are troubled, probably leaving them in a no position to cover the cost of the bailout.

So the simple question remains: why aren't we focusing on the problem that got us here in the first instance -- the scope, range, and size of the mega-institutions whose risk taking has so far inflicted only enormous harm on our economy? If the Republicans pick up this issue before we do, the elections of 2010 could be even worse than we are now fearing.

Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of the state of New York

Rob Johnson, Director of the Economic Policy Initiative of the Roosevelt Institute, has been pegged to lead financier George Soros' $50 million effort to create an "Institute for New Economic Thinking", which will fund research, convene symposiums, and establish a journal -- all in the name of promoting free market skeptics and creating a new economic paradigm.

To this end Soros is gathering market-skeptics this week, including Roosevelt Institute Braintruster and Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Sir James Mirrlees to start the conversation.  "Economics has failed not only to predict and explain what happened but has also failed to protect society," said Johnson in an article in Newsweek. "That's what the crisis revealed. The paradigm has failed. There is no guidance."

Johnson is former managing director at Soros Fund Management. He will lead this exciting new effort from his perch at the Roosevelt Institute. Good luck Rob!

See the story on FRONTLINE of Brooksley Born and the Commodities Futures Trading Corp (CFTC). Featuring Rubin, Greenspan, Summers, Levitt and Roosevelt Institute friends Joe Stiglitz and Michael Greenberger.

From PBS website: "Long before the meltdown, one woman tried to warn about a threat to the financial system."

Click here for details on this must-see episode.

Rob Johnson is a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Project on Global Finance at the Roosevelt Institute.