Joseph Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz is the winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics. From his Q & A with Deborah Solomon in the New York Times Magazine:

As you make the rounds of television talk shows to promote your new book, “Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy,” many of us are wondering why you aren’t talking to the members of the Obama administration instead. Were you offered a job by the president?

No. There was no natural position for me within the usual structure of government.

Why not? You’re a Nobel laureate in economics, a professor at Columbia and a leading critic of the deregulation that you say allowed the banks to wreck the economy.

At the time Obama appointed his economics team, he was focused on getting a team that he thought would have the confidence of the financial markets, a team that the bankers liked.

You refer to his team in your book as people “involved in the mistakes of the past” — like Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve.

As an example, back in the spring of 2008, people like Bernanke were saying we’re over the worst. Regulators didn’t...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue