This is a seven minute clip of a high substance, politically significant exchange with Nobel Economics Laureate Joseph Stiglitz — who hopes that Obama’s economic team will soon — finally — learn from the serious mistakes they have made.
Stiglitz says that there is a major battle of ideas underway. He said that the belief that markets were self-correcting, efficient, and no need for government was completely wrong. He said that regulation is vital.
Stiglitz also said that the first stimulus package was badly designed, deployed, and inadequate in size. He said that there will need to be another stimulus package — mostly focused on helping the states manage their state budget implosions. Stiglitz said that states face a collective $200 billion shortfall in 2010 and that the employment and program slashing states will do is very de-stimulative.
Stiglitz also said that the bank bailout schemes perversely bailed out the banks that made profits through gambling and did virtually nothing for the smaller community and regional banks that made loans and profits in normal ways. Stiglitz lamented that many of these good institutions that did nothing wrong were the ones allowed to go under.
Joe Stiglitz is worth spending a lot more time than 7 minutes with — and one can do that here by watching a longer presentation with him followed by questions and answers from a New America Foundation audience.
Or, better yet, read his new book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy — which is #81 on Amazon’s list as I write this.
Suffice it to say that the course of ideas that Stiglitz has been advocating are what many who supported Barack Obama thought they would be getting from the administration, but instead of Stiglitzianism, America got Rubinism — not from a team of rivals but from a “team of Rubins.”
— Steve Clemons
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