Maverick Nobel prize-winning economist Stiglitz lifts the lid on his years as Chief Economist to the World Bank and what really goes on behind the scenes. Though he’s certainly no Marxist, his insights confirm the correctness of the Marxist outlook on the world economy and its ruling institutions.
Maverick Nobel prize-winning economist Stiglitz lifts the lid on his years as Chief Economist to the World Bank and what really goes on behind the scenes. Though he’s certainly no Marxist, his insights confirm the correctness of the Marxist outlook on the world economy and its ruling institutions. However, Stiglitz’s book is not really about globalisation. It’s about global institutions, particularly the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Joseph comes across in his book as a decent cove who took the top job so he could improve his fellow human beings’ lot. He did not succeed.
He asked himself "What could we do about the 1.2 billion people around the world living on less than a dollar a day, or the 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day - more than 45 percent of the world’s population?" His answer came back from the facts in the book - their plight actually got worse over the 1990s.
Certainly there’s a bit about the turf wars between the two bureaucracies of the IMF and the World Bank in his account. The IMF, in particular, is driven by a hard right theory called the Washington Consensus - Stiglitz describes it as ‘market fundamentalism’.
Stiglitz’s story is devastating. The IMF screwed up big time. Every chapter heading tells the tale - ‘The East Asia crisis: how IMF policies brought the world to the verge of a global meltdown’ and ‘Who lost Russia?’ are examples. The problem, according to Stiglitz, is ‘mistaken economic theories’. Is that really all there is to it?