Editor’s Note: In this second installment of his wOw interview, Good Guys and Bad Guys, is a collection of his writings, explains why Americans are bad investors, China is scary (but not in the ways you might think it is) and greed is only half good.

wOw: What do you see as the future of retirement?

Nocera: I’m pretty pessimistic about retirement. My essential view is that most people are not good investors, because it requires a kind of emotional, hardwiring — zigging when the crowd is zagging — that most of us lack. And yet, our investing ability is the key to a financially secure retirement, because the society has largely shifted to 401k plans, where we have to choose how we want to invest our retirement fund. My guess is that many, many baby boomers are going to retire without the money they need, and will wind up having to go back to work, or sell beloved assets (the family homestead, for instance), to make ends meet. I think we are headed one of these days for a baby-boomer retirement crisis.

Click here to read Who’s the Top Female CEO in America?

wOw: Medicare is in more financial difficulty than social security. Who is addressing this?

Nocera: Nobody! Like social security, it is a sacred cow that politicians only address when they absolutely have to, and right now they don’t. What’s more, the political impulse to give people more goodies only makes the problem worse. What is the single thing the Bush administration pushed for regarding Medicare? The prescription benefit bill that lowered the cost of medicine for the elderly. That was a great thing for the elderly, but it is enormously expensive for the country and only exacerbates Medicare’s problems.

wOw: Tell us about your recent trip to China.

Nocera: I spent a week in Shanghai and a week in Beijing in early April — and I was completely bowled over. No matter how much you read about the economic boom taking place there, it is still eye-opening. Shanghai has more entrepreneurial energy than any place I’ve ever visited. Beijing is full of Internet companies and major corporations. The domestic economy is growing so fast that it won’t be long before China is no longer so dependent on the export economy. It is a country of very smart business people, both men and women. (Indeed, of the three billionaires I met in China, one was a woman who builds high-rises in Beijing.) China is full of problems, and you see them as well. There is plenty of poverty, pollution, petty corruption, lack of free speech and other democratic freedoms — and even the emphasis on making money can seem soulless in some ways. But the potential is so huge, it is hard not to be optimistic about China’s future.

wOw: Should we fear China as a competitor?

Nocera: We most certainly should fear China as a competitor. The problem is not so much the well-known labor issues — the country’s ability to make things at low cost. Even though that has cost jobs in the United States, the low prices have been a net plus to our society — and in any case, our society has to do a better job of preparing its citizens for jobs that don’t depend on low salaries to create a competitive advantage. We can’t win that battle and we shouldn’t try.

The problem is that China is competing with us for resources. Its companies tend to copy successful American products, and then undercut on price. As it becomes an ever more dominant economy, there is a possibility that the dollar will no longer be the world’s most important currency, which would have devastating consequences for us. And in time, when Chinese companies become a little more mature, and become first-rate marketers — which they are not now — one could easily see them competing with high-end goods instead of only those that rely on low-cost labor.