When the current crisis is over, the reputation of American-style capitalism will have taken a beating—not least because of the gap between what Washington practices and what it preaches. Disillusioned developing nations may well turn their backs on the free market Full Story »
Posted by Derek Hawkins
Stiglitz has a knack for seeing the big picture, and here looks at the world economic and political trends. One point he misses about U.S. democracy: we have not had one recently, because of the extreme control of power by politicians financed and controlled by big corporations and the wealthy. Corporatocracy borders on fascism.
While there may be no winners in the current economic crisis, there are losers, and among the big losers is support for American-style capitalism. This has consequences we’ll be living with for a long time to come.
Today only the deluded would argue that markets are self-correcting or that we can rely on the self-interested behavior of market participants to guarantee that everything works honestly and properly.
Publicly financed elections would work to move back toward democracy.