(MONEY Magazine) – After the global economic crisis of 1997 and '98 passed, Time magazine dubbed Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers "The Committee to Save the World." Now, with a new President, only one of those world savers remains in public office. Greenspan's latest partners: Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and National Economic Council director Lawrence Lindsey.

First, O'Neill. The former chief executive of aluminum maker Alcoa already has a reputation in Washington for being plain-spoken and candid. He also knows plenty about business, economics and policy. We met twice early last month, and O'Neill struck me as a combination of Bob Rubin and Jack Welch of General Electric: an affable info junkie and policy wonk who also has lots of experience in the real world.

Larry Lindsey is equally affable, although the former Federal Reserve governor also has quite strong views on tax cuts and recessions--maybe even stronger than O'Neill's. (My chat with Lindsey is on page 63.) Like Rubin and Summers, both O'Neill and Lindsey have only good things to say about their relations with Greenspan. Unlike Rubin and Summers, both would rather not save the world if they don't need to. For now, they're trying to save the U.S. economy as it seemingly teeters on the brink of recession.

Insana: Where's the economy going?

O'Neill: I guess I'm not willing to make a forecast. At the moment [GDP] is sort of bouncing around in the minus-0.5%-to-plus-0.5% range. And all the estimates I'm seeing are saying between 2% and 2.5% real growth for the whole year when it's all done. I don't have a reason to dispute that at the moment. The anecdotal evidence is mixed, and you can find almost whatever you want in terms of what people think is going on. But it doesn't seem to me to be getting worse. And it's bouncing a little--it's a bit like popcorn on a hot skillet right now.

Insana: Do you think the economy might pop a little better if it were salted with a tax cut?

O'Neill: Well, I think it's just another reason to go ahead and do the structural tax reform the President has proposed, and to do it sooner. To me the issue of a tax cut is separate from the issue of where the economy is right now. But I do believe that producing real tax relief right now could be helpful to the economy.

Insana: What concerns you these days about the global economy?

O'Neill: In some countries around the world there are places that don't measure up very well to the ideas of rule of law, contracts that are enforceable, corruption and fraud, and intelligent fiscal and monetary policy.

Insana: Sounds like you are talking about China and Russia in particular.

O'Neill: I guess I won't be too specific. We all know where the hot spots are, where the potential trouble is. Part of my notion is that we can do a better job of talking to governments about what we believe they need to do. So we can say with more authority, "If you keep digging this ditch, it's going to get really deep, and we're not going to help you when you get to the bottom of the ditch." An important reason for doing that is to reduce the risk of contagion, because the thing the financial markets don't like is surprise.

Insana: What about Europe? And Japan--it's been lagging for 10 years.

O'Neill: I'd like to see the world viewed as a three-legged stool of economic growth: the U.S. being one leg, Central and Western Europe being the second and Japan being the third. Maybe Europe could do a little bit better, but they're doing fairly well. As for the lag in Japan, maybe we can help Japan raise their sights as to what their rate of real growth ought to be. But they're going to have to figure out for themselves exactly what they need to do. It's obvious a variety of interventions they've tried the past 10 years haven't worked.

Insana: Some say Japan's sluggishness has become so intractable that there's just one option left: to explode the supply of yen in order to reinflate the economy. How do you feel about that?

O'Neill: I don't know; I'm a real-economy guy, and I think the problem is basically two things. One is they've got a lot of assets on the books that aren't worth anything. And they need to deal with that; they need to clean up their balance sheets so that what's left can actually be serviced by the earnings of the enterprises that they represent. The second thing they need to do is really a thousand things, but it can be captured most easily by saying that if their economy were fully subject to world price competition, the Japanese people are really smart and they would do all the tens of thousands of things that are probably necessary for them to prosper and to have real growth rates that are more like 4% than 1%.

If we can help Japanese leadership and Japanese society achieve what I'm sure they want--which is higher levels of real growth--they can be true to the aspirations of their own people and be an important source of economic growth that can help in developing the rest of the world.

Insana: In the past several years, the G-7 leadership summits seem to have degenerated into mere photo opportunities with wonderful food. How do you make them more substantive?

O'Neill: I'd settle for no food and no photos myself. I'm not a fan of wasting my time--and I don't intend to waste my time. I've already begun having some one-on-one conversations with people who've been part of this club for some time and I'm learning from them and trying to understand what this process is all about. I do think there's a useful purpose to be served by getting people talking to each other. But I am not prepared to spend three or four days every quarter traveling around to some fancy place to eat fancy food and have photo ops. That's just not what I'm gonna do.

Insana: Everybody I've talked to identifies you as a very independent thinker who speaks his mind. Will that have to change somewhat now that you're the Treasury Secretary?

O'Neill: I hope not. But we'll see, Ron.

Insana: What happens when you disagree with other members of the Administration or maybe even the President himself?

O'Neill: I think this President likes strong-willed people. That doesn't mean that people ought to be off the ranch all the time. I'll tell you, I love working with this President because I believe he's genuinely interested in informed dissent. And at the end of the day, he's the President. You've got to do what he wants you to do, and do it with some enthusiasm, or you need to leave.

Ron Insana is co-anchor of CNBC's Business Center and author of The Message of the Markets (HarperBusiness).