I've lamented that the Occupy Wall Street movement must somehow transcend anger into action before it can truly be valuable. After all, I suppose the movement wants to be more than an inspiration for many and a pain for some. It has tapped into the frustrations of a nation, and it has the potential to also move our economy and society forward. To do any less would be to squander the energy of many. And, it might be equal folly to assume that the political machine will respond to these collective frustrations when the worst recession since the Great Depression has not spurred them into cooperation and action.

I offer some ideas that I believe will create true value for the future, innovation for our nation and opportunity for our young. These ideas are not based on smoke and mirrors or on the magical thinking that income redistribution or class warfare will somehow translate into economic value and sustainability. Rather, I believe they will help create the rising tide that must lift all boats.

First, we can all rally around the desire to once again place the United States at the pinnacle of global research and development. We have lost our way in this regard. We have an immigration policy that has scared foreign students into universities in Canada, Australia, and Great Britain. We must win them back by once again making our nation the beacon for the best and brightest minds in the world.

For that matter, there are others who want to invest millions into our nation and stimulate the small- and medium-sized business sector. We have a program that tries to do just that, called the EB5 program, but it is sufficiently complicated that it manages to best stimulate the legal industry.

We should remember that most jobs are created by small businesses, and we should get realistic in nurturing this sector that was injured in the recession and continues to be bruised in the recovery. Meanwhile, the very large companies were bailed out, and are now making unprecedented profits. I recently had an experience starting up a small business with my wife, and found it necessary to prove we were leasing a building that we were required to leave closed for six months until we finally received our license to open. Obviously, such regulatory delays costs well-intentioned entrepreneurs tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each year, solely because of regulatory insensitivity.

I propose that each business that must work with the government be offered an ombudsman that will shepherd their questions and application through the government maze as rapidly as possible. I don't expect that government needs to expand for this advocacy, though. Instead, I expect that it will create a greater internal awareness in the regulatory hurdles that have grown unabated over decades. We should end up with much more efficient government once government is required to provide solutions rather than speed bumps.

We can all agree that financial markets have lost their original reason to be. Once a tool to raise capital and mobilize savings, they have been taken over by speculators interested in gambling at the expense of the rest of us. And, they make spectacular profits by increasing the variance and risk of markets. Indeed, they represented one out of every three dollars of profits in this nation as late as 2006, without producing a product for which there is always an obvious need.

We have to renew our reputation as the nation that produces the better mousetrap, not the more obscure financial product. And, we must reduce the uncertainty and fluctuation in world markets that arises out of speculation and less-than-thoughtful politicking.

One way to reduce the pursuit of short-term profits at the expense of long-term profitability is to impose a Tobin Tax. This tax, named after its originator, Nobel Prize winner James Tobin, would impose perhaps a 1/10th of 1 percent tax on financial transactions.

Such a tiny tax would do nothing to impede medium and long term investment, but would go far into taking the profits out of market manipulators and nano-traders that go into and out of the same stock many of times in a day, or even in an hour.

Perhaps the tax could even be used to lower taxes for the rest of us, or help pay off a debt out of control.

Finally, if we do nothing different, our annual federal budget deficit will be 200 percent of GDP in a decade or two. We cannot have debt that grows faster than our GDP, just as individuals cannot go into debt deeper than their income grows each year and expect to someday dig themselves out of an ever deeper hole.

Of course, these are just a few modest proposals. There are many other things we must do, from campaign funding and political reform to education, regulation and immigration reform, that future columns will discuss.

The point is, though, that ideas and discussions are the first steps to solutions. We must go beyond the anger and denial into the bargaining and acceptance stages of our national grief.

Colin Read chairs the Economics and Finance Dept. at SUNY Plattsburgh. Continue the conversation at www.pressrepublican.com/0216_read.