One lively debate was about when employment will rise again, during the conference kickoff presentation paneled by two academics: Morris Davis, assistant professor, real estate and urban land economics with the Wisconsin School of Business, and Robert Gordon, the Stanley G. Harris professor of the social sciences and professor of economics at Northwestern University.

Davis said he believes, with positive indicators such as sustained GDP growth and an expected drop in inventory, that the unemployment rate should fall from about 10% to 6.5% by 2013. Gordon says this is much too optimistic. “I think we’ll only see it drop to about 8% in three years, it will not likely go beyond a 1% per year drop,” Gordon said.

Both agreed that there is a definite increase in lending, deals getting done and company productivity. However, the unemployment has created an uncertainty that has kept many businesses from true growth.

Zell agreed. “How can businesses make decisions with all this uncertainty?” he said. A known opponent of the current administration, Zell said if he had been elected president, he would have made only one thing his focus. “We should just call a time-out right now, and say that we won’t work on anything else but creating jobs. We’ve wasted nine months screwing around, with things such as health care and other distractions.”

He said he’s not worried about other instability signals in the market, but said that companies today should have changed their model to be more prepared for catastrophe. “You need about 50% higher liquidity in your business, to create a bigger margin of safety for your investors,” he said.