Joseph Stiglitz - "Market Fundamentalism Is Dead"

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/10/20/Naomi_Klein_and_Joseph_Stiglitz_on_Economic_Power

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz criticizes American financial leadership in the run-up to the current economic crisis, and declares free-market fundamentalism "dead" as a guiding principle of the U.S. economy.

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What is the role of the U.S. in the disposition of the world's economic and environmental resources? How are financial markets best defended from economic shock? Does liberalization ensure prosperity?

Journalist Naomi Klein speaks with economists Joseph Stiglitz and Hernando de Soto in a conversation moderated by David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center - City University of New York (CUNY)

Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank until January 2000. Before that he was the chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. He is currently a finance and economics professor at Columbia University. He is the author of Globalization and Its Discontents and The Roaring Nineties.

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[tristramshandy3]

@DystopianUtopia no, I am saying most Americans direct ALL of their anger at the government- so they vote out the dems or repubs, replacing them with dems or repubs. The problem is, the banks own BOTH the dems and the repubs. Bush's treasury secretary was a former ceo of Goldman Sachs. Obama's number one contributor in 2008 was goldman sachs.

Our government has been taken over by big business.

Let's get corporate cash out of our elections.

Take care.

[BigMillRip]

@theawesomemanman The USA's "golden age" was the couple of decades after the second world war. When the US was adding millions to its middle class, and the middle class was gaining wealth year in year out. That was true social mobility, the American dream if you will. However, since the eighties social mobility has collapsed, income inequality soared, and the middle classes have been all but decimated. It looks almost like a reverse in development. Just my view from outside.

Take care.

[Teadon86]

To really cut this my post short, I leave things unexplained as I've done already to avoid a wall of text, I will claim that a capitalist market can't and never will exist without a government because it demands many crucial components to work. It demands, before all, stability, predictability and mandatory compliance with it's inherit laws. Also one can't tribute capitalism of being the first true barer of freedom, education and equality, since that goes inherently against the system.

[Teadon86]

The capitalist laws, lets us call them that for the sake of it, was an internal factor of imperialism. Yes, there was imperialism before capitalism but it gave imperialism new means and ways to expand upon the simple basic of growth and price discovery. It also gave moral justifications for a man to claim another man's property on the sole basis that the first owner didn't utilize his land profitable. In short the one could even claim that the market will rediscover slavery.

[Teadon86]

But isn't that based upon that there will always be an growth? An ever increasing growth and no disruptions? Also a free capitalist markets do have its own inherit rules. First: everyone is subjugated under the law of profit. Secondly: Everyone has to rationalize its own work force. Third: There must be a substitutional landless class. Forth: since the birth of the capitalist market the government has been there to protect it, basically the market can't survive without the gov

[BogartWestern]

the point of my comment is that even though best case scenario for all is the Austrian philosophy of the market, free enterprise, would be the A1 option; however, it's not an option. it wouldn't work in the world we live in, as it is right now. the political and social engineering of national governments working with the UN, IMF, and other global agencies won't allow any truly free markets to exist anywhere in the world (except black or grey markets). that's why Keynesian economics dominates.

[BogartWestern]

everyone with any understanding of "basic economics" understands that free markets work if their left to their own devices. unfortunately, we don't live in a world free of taxation, free of government regulations and agencies enforcing those regulations, and free of military spending and war. "market fundamentalism" isn't going to be a priority for those in charge, whether in the private or public sectors. it's ridiculous to keep the pedantic argument going when we know it'll never be.

[devourerofbabies]

@TheRacistsMustDie Indeed it is.

[TheRacistsMustDie]

Is that David Harvey next to him?

[KrugmanTheKing]

@LogicalFlawDetector

What he meant here was that the government wasn't very demanding when they sent money.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@LogicalFlawDetector

Stiglitz has under hand two modelling methods: one that works, one that doesn't work. The problem is that many people are very fond of the second one and go on to note dumbly what they think Stiglitz said, just to try and dent his point... lol

What he said is that it's the lack of regulation that causes troubles and, then, he criticized the manner in which they gave money to the banks. The issue with the bailout was again the lack of limits.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@MaudsPas

Budgets are like all other bills: they ought to be voted, even if you get the privilege of presenting them. Even if you appoint a genius there, if people believe in market orthodoxy, they will vote their own way up the economical gallows.