LIVE from Pittsburgh: The path to restoring America's economic security

Here in Pittsburgh, we just finished a lunchtime panel about economic security called Building a Twenty First Century Economy with Dean Baker, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and SEIU's Anna Burger, moderated by Kevin Drum.

The discussion, as you might expect, focused around the collapse of the financial system last fall and what policymakers need to do to speed a recovery. Several ideas were explored at length. They included:

Passing the Employee Free Choice Act. America's union movement, over the course of many decades, helped to create a larger, more prosperous middle class, lifting many families out of poverty. But thanks to anti-worker policies implemented by Republicans (notably under Reagan) and efforts by greedy executives in the private sector to keep workers from organizing, the percentage of the workforce that is unionized has been in decline. This has weakened America's economy. Removing the barriers that have been set up to prevent workers from organizing would allow workers to bargain for better pay and benefits, which would boost consumer spending and home ownership.

Creating a second stimulus package. The Obama administration's first stimulus package may have saved jobs and kept the economy from cratering, but more work needs to be done. A second stimulus, targeted especially towards the states, could prevent horrific budget cuts over the next biennium, staving off layoffs and keeping public services funded at a critical time.

Regulatory reform. Today there is no central agency that is focused on protecting and educating consumers. We have the Food & Drug Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, and other agencies policing industries, but that's not the same as having an EPA for consumer protection, which we sorely need. The panel also agreed that it's time to reinstate the Glass Steagall Act, or implement new restrictions to prevent bank deposits from being used to enable speculation on a grand scale.

Making some changes at the Fed. The Federal Reserve, which wields an extraordinary amount of power, is dominated by its member banks. Making the Fed more accountable to the American people would help end some of the bad business practices that contributed to the onset of the Great Recession.

This ended up being one of the better panels at this year's Netroots Nation, and the topic was a great choice. We've got a couple of afternoon panels left, then the closing keynote, which concludes this year's convention.