Mar. 25, Interview - The US financial crisis, subsequent government bail up, deepening US financial crisis followed by another government bail out has caused analysts to wait and see if these are the right actions to take.

We bring you one of those people who have been watching the economic downturn very closely.

Doug Henwood is editor of Left Business Observer, author of the book Wall Street and host of "Behind the News" an economics show on Pacifica Station WBAI in New York.

He gives some insight on the main players, and what he thinks should be done.

"In any case, so far the Fed has made mostly promises that have not yet been called on. So there hasn't been any significant expenditure of actual public funds in the bailout, or during the extraordinary measures that have proceeded it in recent months.

"The Fed is one of those rare creatures that can print money out of thin air, without getting arrested for it. It doesn't get any appropriations from Congress, out of the Federal Budget. It's self-financing mainly because it buys Treasuring Bonds, with that money that it creates, and it collects the interest payments on them. It deducts whatever it wants for expenses, and passes along what remains as profit, about $25 billion a year recently, to the US Treasury."

"But it's also extremely unlikely that this crisis will be resolved with out the expenditure of real tax payers money... Since the expenditure of public funds is probably inevitable, it would be very nice if the public to get something in return although the precedence for that is not very encouraging. At the very least, the financial system needs to be re-regulated...

"But Wall Street types will complain that this will hurt them badly or assert that regulation is impossible because everything is just too complicated these days. These claims should be studiously ignored."

"The whole boom bust bailout cycle has gotten very dangerous.

This time around, the hang over is likely to be worse. What might the next one look like with out some sort of re-regulation. Fortunately some people in Washington are starting to talk about this but with out serious public pressure, the talk will likely remain pure indulgence."

That was Doug Henwood, radio host and author of the book Wall Street.