"Let big banks fail"

That's the message top economists have for the US government dealing with a bloated and ineffective financial system in breakdown. The story can be found here.

Highlights:

Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz and MIT professor Simon Johnson warned the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that the current government policy of propping up troubled financial giants could impede an economic recovery.

They each said spending taxpayer dollars freely on behalf of struggling big banks risks drowning U.S. productive capacity in debt -- while handing what amounts to an enormously costly subsidy to politically powerful financial sector insiders.

If the Obama administration fails to hold troubled banks accountable for their problems, the U.S. could face a lost decade of economic growth like Japan's in the 1990s, they said.

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig, said policymakers must allow troubled firms to fail rather than propping them up, a la AIG (AIG, Fortune 500). He said banks must be treated consistently, regardless of their size or connections, for the sake of restoring confidence to markets and normal function to the economy.

"Rather than letting the market system objectively discipline the firms through failure and stockholder loss," Hoenig said of the current approach to bailouts, "we tend to micromanage the institutions and punish those within reach."