Google CEO Hits the Campaign Trail With Obama - Page 2

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Checking the fundamentals

To New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, himself a one-time presidential hopeful and a former Secretary of Energy, the promise of vibrant clean-energy and high-tech industries begins with education.

"To build a new economy we need a trained workforce," he said. Richardson went a step further than the Democratic nominee in calling for the abolition of the No Child Left Behind Act, the controversial education law that places an emphasis on measurable achievement and school accountability through standardized testing. Obama has said the law needs to be updated, but not scrapped entirely.

"I'd get rid of it and start over," Richardson said, calling for increases in teachers' salaries. "Put that money into the classroom for kids."

Addressing the more immediate crisis of the credit supply and banking industry, Volcker, who helped stanch the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, called for a fresh look at government regulation to restore stability to an industry now heavily propped up by federal money.

"One of the biggest challenges for the next administration will be how do we re-privatize institutions that never should have needed to be socialized in the first place by this administration," he said. "This is not a partisan matter. This is a problem that has to be dealt with in a nonpartisan way."