By Jennifer Schonberger.

Bob Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management and author of the book Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System, stopped by Fool HQ recently to talk about some of these hot-button issues facing our economy and markets. He chatted with us about the sustainability of the market rally, rebalancing the global economy, the dollar, and gold. Here are some highlights from our conversation.

Most books about the nation’s financial crisis tell us what happened. In his new book, HBS senior lecturer Robert Pozen tells us how to fix the system. A financial industry veteran and chairman of MFS Investment Management, a Boston firm that oversees more than $170 billion in pension and mutual funds, Pozen writes with authority and unusual clarity about complex issues in Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System (Wiley).

Written by Elizabeth Leonard.

Comprehensive in scope, Too Big to Save looks at each of the factors that played a role in the crisis: the housing boom, subprime loans and the impact of mortgage-backed securities; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; credit default swaps, AIG and collateralized debt obligations; hedge funds and short selling; and capital requirements. But this is not an alphabet soup. These topics are precisely defined and clearly presented in a highly readable and well-paced narrative. Moreover, ..read more

By Katharine Q. Seelye. What is the Public Option? “Some see it as having the government act as a provider of last resort,” Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, wrote online in Harvard Business, arguing in favor of state-based public options. “Others mean a national one-payer system based on the Medicare model. Still others mean health care cooperatives, though they do not exist in most of the U.S.”

Whatever the public option may actually be, the public itself seems ..read more

Funding a down payment with the credit increases the odds the buyer will default.