Tom Friedman tells it like it is on climate change.  We like one aspect of the approach he appears to favor: a fee on carbon-intensive imports.  States are stretching their stimulus dollars with lower than expected bids coming in for major projects.  (Those fears that Buy America requirements would significantly raise costs are proving to be completely unfounded.) More and more people are coming to the realization that the global economic system can not remain the same after the financial crisis.  Martin Wolf in today’s FT talks about one aspect of the system that has to change, global macroeconomic imbalances.  The world where some countries amass huge current account surpluses (China) and others sustain huge current account deficits (U.S.) has effectively ended.  Wolf complements China's Central Bank governor for proposing reforms to the global financial system.  But PRC's Bank Governor evades China's responsibility in making those reforms possible.  Zhou Xiaochuan states that the U.S. "cannot sustain the growth pattern of high consumption and low savings," but in the same breath defends China's exceptionally high savings rate as a matter of "culture" and "tradition."  China's savings rate of 50% of the GDP and low consumption is the other side of the coin of global imbalances.  Until that changes, nothing in the global economic system will.