Shilling said tax cuts won't work in a deflationary environment because they won't increase consumer spending.

Forbes, on the other hand, argued tax cuts are needed now to increase productivity and build wealth. He spent much of his presentation criticizing the Fed, particularly former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and current Chairman Ben Bernanke, for keeping interest rates artificially low and causing the housing bubble that was the precursor to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

But now, a big reason problems are still persisting is that the regulatory system remains "anti-lending," and as a result, banks are still cutting lines of credit and raising interest rates for small businesses, he said.

Still, the biggest threat to the economy is the weak dollar, Forbes maintained. "We need a strong, stable dollar. A weak dollar means a weak recovery."

Another keynoter, well-known market analyst Ned Davis, said he believes that the U.S. is in a secular bear market. Nevertheless, big rallies, or cyclical bull markets, occur during long-term bear markets, he says, and his firm does not yet see evidence that the rally that began earlier this year is ready to end.

"There are a lot of similarities to 1938 and now," said Davis, president and senior investment strategist of Ned Davis Research Inc., during his presentation, entitled "Foundations of a Super-Cycle or Secular Lows?"

In the session "Lessons From Advisors Who Dodged The Bullet," advisors J. Michael Martin, Gregory Sullivan and Louis Stanasolovich agreed that one of their important goals is to minimize risk for their clients, particularly those at or close to retirement. In addition to financial planning, all three use a number of strategies to invest for their clients and are concerned about the "new normal" for returns over the next five or ten years.

"Most of our clients are financially independent, and one of our most important rules is not to allow clients to fall back over that line," said Sullivan, president of Sullivan, Bruyette, Speros & Blayney, an advisory firm based in McLean, Va., and owned by Harris Bank.

The stock market decline and poor economy haven't forced many, if any, of their clients to return to work, the advisors said. But some have decided to delay retirement and others have had to rein in their spending. "Spending on adult children is the number one problem we see in retirement. They're giving their children too much, frankly," said Stanasolovich, founder, CEO and president of Legend Financial Advisors in Pittsburgh.

Martin, president and chief investment officer of Financial Advantage in Columbia, Md., noted the amount of money varies that clients believe they need to retire, but many of them think they should have investments worth about $2 million.