White paper on “The Way Forward: Moving From the Post-Bubble, Post-Bust Economy to Renewed Growth and Competitiveness.”

New York Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera's Oct. 10 column headlined "This Time, It Really Is Different" summarizes and links to the study, by Daniel Alpert, a managing partner of Westwood Capital; Robert Hockett, a professor of financial law at Cornell and a consultant to the New York Federal Reserve; and economist Nouriel Roubini of New York University, who Nocera describes as "well, Nouriel Roubini, whose consistently bearish views have been consistently right." Nocera's take on it:

How can we break this cycle? Like most mainstream economists, Alpert, Hockett and Roubini roll their eyes at the calls for immediate government deficit reduction, which led to the creation of the supercommittee. Reducing government spending in the short term will only make things worse.

Instead, they believe that this is perhaps the best time in recent history for the government to take on a sustained infrastructure program, lasting from five to seven years, to create jobs and demand. “Labor costs will never be lower,” says Hockett. “Equipment costs will never be lower. The cost of capital will never be lower. Why wait?” Their plan calls for $1.2 trillion in spending — not all by the government, but all overseen by government — that would add 5.2 million jobs each year of the program. Alpert says that current ideas, like tax cuts, meant to stimulate the economy indirectly, just won’t work for a problem as big the one we are facing. Indeed, so far, they haven’t.

Their second solution involves restructuring the mortgage debt that is crushing so many Americans. It is a complex proposal that involves, for some homeowners, a bridge loan, for others, a reduction in mortgage principal, and, for others still, a plan that allows them to rent the homes they live in with the prospect of buying them back one day.

Finally, they call for a “global rebalancing,” which includes a radical change in the current dysfunctional relationship between creditor and debtor nations, and even a new global currency that would be administered by the International Monetary Fund.

Nocera is an experienced financial journalist, as a business columnist and staff writer for The New York Times Magazine since 2003, and for 10 years before that as a writer and editor of Fortune magazine. "It is impossible to do justice to 'The Way Forward' in this space," he says. Instead, he provides a link to the 35-page paper.

"You can find it at http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_way_forward," Nocera says. "You should read it — even if your congressman doesn’t."