Editor Notes

At January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the five co-chairs, including Aetna Chairman and CEO Ronald A. Williams, shared their thoughts on actions most urgently needed as we revamp the global financial regulatory framework and try to extract ourselves from the economic morass into which we have sunk.

We read so often of heads of state, their families and other well-to-do individuals in Africa who travel to developed countries for medical treatment that we may be inclined to think that the term “medical tourism” was invented for Africans

Americans deserve an honest discourse on how to fix their health-care system. That’s not what they’ve gotten on the notion of a public insurance plan.

I am one of 300-plus million consumers in the United States. I consume, therefore I spend, and I spend in dollars. How much and how frequently I spend determine in large measure the health of the U.S. economy. Consumer spending fuels a whopping 70 percent of this country’s economy.

The Conference Board’s 2009 Annual Conference Dinner on May 27 wasn’t just  a gathering of corporate glitterati in the Greek-inspired grandeur of Cipriani Wall Street for a night of fine wine, fine food and back-patting.

During the 1973 energy crisis, British economist E.F. Schumacher published a collection of articles and essays titled Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered that called for a holistic approach to human society centered around small-scale, localized solutions.

In the early 1980s, I worked for an investment bank that became among the first to crumble when the subprime mortgage market went bust. As an assistant tobrokers, I was by no means high up in the firm.

From Jan. 28 to Feb. 1, heads of state, policymakers, and the chief executives of leading corporations, financial and academic institutions, think tanks and social nonprofits met in the moutain resort of Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, to discuss possible solutions to the world problems.