Friday, September 9, 2016

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz's new book is The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe. From his Q&A with Isaac Chotiner at Slate:

You’ve written about the connection between monopolies and inequality. How much do you worry about the rise of companies such as Amazon and Google? We tend to think of monopolies as being about steel.

I do worry about it a lot. I do not think there are any simple solutions. I do think, for instance, the Justice Department has made a mistake in not recognizing Amazon’s monopsony power.

Do you think people like Hillary Clinton and others in the Democratic Party recognize going forward how important these issues are?

I think so. The reason why I say that is even Obama, who was more conservative ...

More conservative than Hillary?

More conservative than Hillary, yes. I think his temperament is basically more conservative and he did not go as far on Dodd-Frank as many people wanted. He opposed some of the key provisions that eventually got in the bill.

What I was going to say was his Council of Economic Advisers has highlighted the increase in market power and he issued an executive order asking each agency to come up with initiatives to deal with it. That train has left the station, so I really think that this is going to be...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue