Many people are comparing the financial crisis to the Great Depression. Will it really be that bad?

It's going to be bad, very bad. We're experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and we haven't reached the bottom yet. I'm very pessimistic. Governments are indeed reacting better today than during the global economic crisis. They're lowering interest rates and boosting the economy with economic stimulus plans. This is the right direction, but it's not enough.

At least governments worldwide are bracing themselves against the recession, as opposed to the global economic crisis where they accelerated the recession through their savings policy.

That's right. That's why I'm confident we'll get off lighter than during the Great Depression. On the other hand, there's a series of developments that make me very anxious. The state of our financial system, for example, is worse than it was 80 years ago.

Hundreds of banks collapsed in the U.S. at that time. Today most of them are being saved by the government. What's so bad about that?

The banks that survived 80 years ago continued to lend money. Today many banks aren't lending money anymore, above all the large investment banks. This will deepen the crisis.

The U.S. government's emergency plan is supposed to prevent this, though. The banks receive money from the state so they can continue to give loans.

That's the idea, but it doesn't work. We're just throwing money at them and they pay billions of it out in bonuses and dividends. We taxpayers are being robbed for all intents and purposes in order to reduce the losses that some wealthy people bear. This has to be changed.

The leaders of the 20 largest industrial nations are meeting in London this week to discuss the regulation of financial markets. Will the meeting be successful?

I'm skeptical. The American government does talk a lot about stricter regulation of financial markets. I doubt that it's serious, though. The Americans have always been masters at changing a supposed regulation measure into further deregulation.

Do you expect this of the new Obama administration as well?

Obama himself has made clear in many speeches that he wants to prevent prospecting in the American financial industry. But Obama is under pressure from Wall Street. Even within his own administration, there are a lot of officials who are only for cosmetic corrections.

The economic crisis has severely damaged the economic model of finance-driven turbo-capitalism. Will this lead to a renaissance in the state economy?

I don't think so. The fall of the Berlin Wall really was a strong message that communism does not work as an economic system. The collapse of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15 again showed that unbridled capitalism doesn't work either.

Could authoritarian systems like China's be the future?

Besides the two extremes of communism and capitalism, there are alternatives, such as Scandinavia or Germany. The Chinese model has succeeded very well for their people, but at the price of democratic rights. The German social model, however, has worked very well. It could also be a model for the U.S. administration.