Tweet
Writing in the July issue of Vanity Fair, Joseph Stiglitz gives a sobering analysis of just how much damage Wall Street has done to the economic stability of the globe.
When those who call themselves free marketers are in reality freebooters, little better than pillagers and pirates [sidebar: who can't appreciate the juxtaposition with Cap'n Jack Sparrow's alter ego Johnny Depp judiciously sprinkled all over the webpage furthering the message], long past time they be clapped in irons. And I know just the little Caribbean prison to put ‘em in.
After all, it’s just like Club Fed, isn’t it?
.
crossposted at Prairie Sun Rising
13 Comments
When Stigletz speaks many listen. Wondering why Obama is not taping this mans brain?
Did you mean…tapping?
But for FDL and progressive blogtopia, I’d have been oblivious to Stiglitz. Sure can’t count on Murdoch Media and the rest of the claque to enlighten and inform.
thank you prairie! i hadn’t read that article yet and i am a big, big fan of stiglitz.
It’s obvious why Obama is not “tapping” Stiglitz’s brain. He’s a bought-and-paid for corporate tool. Why should he listen to stink liberals who want simple things like fairness for the non-rich 90 percent of us?
Change you can believe in!
Thank you, prairie. The ongoing piracy of the world’s economy is another attachment to the “supplemental” — i.e., funding the IMF to bail out 3rd world banks which will probably be routed through the global banks and operated like the U.S. student loan program: heads we win, tails you lose.
karen
Going back more than a hundred and fifty years to the letters of Marx and Engels while Marx was writing the Grundrisse he continually mentioned how the free traders were that in name only and that as long as their industry (cotton weaving at the time) was protected from the vagaries of the market by government subsidies they trumpeted free trade. As soon as any competition came along they turned to the government to impose high tariffs and duties to keep the competing products out of their “free” market.
The same has been true wherever capitalists tout the free market whether it’s outright subsidies or the oil depletion allowance or most recently the billions of dollars thrown at the banks so they could get back on their feet.
There is no such thing as a free market and the lies of Friedman and his monetarist Nazis should have been exposed long ago for what they are. As long as the education system in this country is deprived of necessary funds and teachers are forced to teach to the tests instead of teaching kids how to think, the people of this country will continue to be led around like the sheep they’ve become.
Another example is hemp, which farmers are lobbying to restore growing. Under the guise of the “drug war” the barons of timber successfully got rid of the paper the Declaration of Independence is printed on…leaving us with the chaff that passes for paper pulp these days.
Meanwhile, just a couple hours over the border in Canada, hemp seeds are used to coat the walleye dinner….
FREE MARKET is a FICTION.
ain’t that the truth
It’s true of what Wall Street calls “free”, anyway.
The founders of capitlaism as an idea, the political economists, never for a moment imagined an economy that was free only for a rich, privileged class. Nor did they consider ending government regulation–they just wanted regulations that prevented the kinds of monopolies and class-protections that the 18th century monarchies maintained.
Look up Ricardo over at Wikipedia and read what he has to say about Rent and the regulation of usury (that is, finance).
I keep saying this;
The people who are robbing us will not stop robbing us until we stop making believe that we are not being robbed, and our new president is not going to help us with this until we explain to him that we’ve stopped making believe, and we want him to stop making believe too.
“reality freebooters, little better than pillagers and pirates”
This is a libel on pirates. Pirates admit that their business is illegal and expect to be imprisoned, hanged, or worse the first time they are caught (Britain used to stake out pirates at the low tide line at Tyburn). Our Wall Streeters expect to be rewarded for their business acumen by a grateful and adoring world.
So let’s just make “Wall Streeter” and “financier” pejorative in their own right and leave the old pirates alone.
In fact, I wonder if the defense for that Somali guy in New York has considered selective and disproportionate prosecution as a defense? Maybe call Bernanke and Geithner as witnesses to what is and is not acceptable business practice?
As a former Wall Street professional economist (allow a few secs for well considered booing & hissing…) I can’t speak highly enough of old Joe.; he’s one of the good guys. He got it right in his predictions about the mess that would be created by the thieves, liars & pillagers I used to work for (I am an ex-UBS’er). There were precious few of us who were honest, or conscientious, enough to call it for what it was. Joe, Krugman, Roubini, James Galbraith and others in academia had the independence to add 2 + 2 and announce the ‘truth’ about 4. However, even distinguished academics such as Bernanke – a specialist (sic) in the economics of the 1930’s – could easily put on blinders.
On the street, we lesser beings had no alternative but to spout the party line – it’s economic speak for ‘I was just obeying orders’. The guys at the top of the ‘profession’ such as Summers & Geithner was simply too busy raking in their personal fortunes to give a damn. They are morally corrupt & intellectually bankrupt as Joe’s latest missive shows.
These immediate post-election choices for his economic team were, IMHO, one of the earliest red flags thrown up by Obama. His subsequent behavior on national security, privacy, the rule of law, etc is why we have become increasingly cautious about him. I apologise for rambling slightly off topic…but on a similar domestic political vein to Joe’s article, I can’t help linking to William Greider’s recent piece in the Nation about the economy & the democrats:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/greider
I have voiced very similar views to these ideas on this blog before.
Thanks for the link to the Stiglitz article. I can only reiterate that we will not begin to sort through this mess until we begin to address the fundamental problems that created it. The current Obama policy of trying to re-inflate the bubble is a policy of denial and will only exacerbate our economic situation in the not so long run.