ought to do is to discuss the research infrastructure needed to implement (presumably inevitable) budget cuts in the best possible manner. There is an answer in globalization of research, unfortunately it will never become a reality. It's this nationalized/corporate fragmentation of research efforts and the competitive nature of research grants that increase the costs and hinder meaningful advancement. Because there are profits to be protected, national security fears, and governments playing politics research will remain under-funded, often duplicated, and put on the back burner. There are areas of that have the potential to side-step these issues for now, specifically biological systems and astronomy. Unfortunately finding someone to invest the money in an organization that could globalize such research would be near impossible. Joerg, here is another angle -- and probably completely wrong. I am an engineering manager. So I'll take the following view. Going by Pareto (80-20) rule, most immediately useful fundamental research should be already present. In times of economic difficulty, money should be diverted to non-fundamental research that may bring results the quickest. Such low hanging fruits will nourish the economy. Eventually money will be back to fundamental research. For example, fine tuning Einstein's theory is less likely to bring immediate change in the market than an all-optical internet router. So photonics takes priority. A few comments on the comments: 1) Giving vast amounts of money to a few handpicked research groups is a sure fire way to kill science. First of all, experience shows that much of