The Economist back in the 19th century advocated the market solution to the Irish Famine. We know how now how wise that was, and how good for the Irish? Shame on you for getting this Brit to comment.
Some time ago you had an Irish economist, David McWilliams, on to comment on the Irish situation. I called in because I had read his book, The Pope's Children, which examined the state of the Irish economy in an entertaining and enlightening way. Since then he has gone on to greater feats. Last summer he had a comedy/economics revue that was a hit in Dublin. He was also at the Kilkenomics festival this month in Kilkenny. Great fun.

What did the guest mean when he said that "Bill Clinton was a successful Republican President"?

Matthew Bishop, American business editor for The Economist and co-author of "The Road from Ruin: How to Revive Capitalism and Put America Back on Top" is a market fundamentalist. During the interview, Bishop expressed his belief that the French should suck it up and raise their retirement eligibility age because is the lowest in the EU. If Brian could have mustered something other than, "wow" he might have asked Matt if he thinks along the same line of reasoning that Ireland should raise its corporate tax rate since at 12% it is the lowest in Europe.

Couldn't you get a left-leaning perspective on the European Crisis for the sake of balance?

The whole reflexive Anglo French bashing thing is intellectually lazy and ignores underlying causes/history. We all know what the US Business editor for the Economist is going to say about this stuff.

So typical...try as Lehrer might to get the guest and the Irish callers to blame the rich and/or the free market, they didn't bite. People are collectively responsible for overspending and using their homes' equity as a bank account --just like here! Enough of the liberal blame game, please. Man up and take personal responsibility.

Ireland's crisis means that "free market" capitalism has failed. The public should learn this lesson, let the rich lose their money (ie let banks fail), and strengthen our public sector. Instead what is happening is that the public sector is being savaged to subsidize private profit.

Didn't Greece's economy collapse because no one paid their taxes?

Greece is not a third world country!
especially when compared to Ireland.

you got a lot of guts calling Greece third world after your economy just collapsed as Greeces did.

With all the massive cuts to government, will Western Europe find themselves in worsened straits? For example, will their life expectancies drop to only a year or two ahead of ours, especially for their poor? Will their children be only two grades ahead of ours at graduation? Will they be only 50% as worried as the average American about falling into poverty?

That would all be a shame; the greater shame is that enough of us here have never realised that our society is not there for _us_, so its not working for us is only to be expected---and all the more so in "bad times" (at least for most of us).

Barack Obama's global stature has taken a catastrophic fall, as evidenced by his latest trip overseas. Even the New York Times cannot avert its eyes from the disastrous decline in his (and therefore America's) influence:
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_16589240

Is the rejection of Obama by the G20 members due to their inherent racism, or was it simply a matter of not explaining his ideas more clearly to this group of dimwits (who obviously are his intellectual inferiors?)

"How to revive capitalism?" "How to put America back on top?" "Other countries learning from Greece and Ireland?"

You guys need to get out more. You know who cares about "capitalism? America's position? "Other" "countries" "learning?" You guys. Maybe election hacks. And annual report scribes.

Everybody else, and I mean everybody else, cares about two things at most: 1. free money today, and 2. that their next door neighbor does worse (otherwise known as the "Asian Lottery," where you don't actually win money but they kill your neighbor's pig.)