Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
W.W. Norton & Co.; 361 pages
Bankers are born no greedier than the rest of us. That assertion alone makes Joseph Stiglitz's comprehensive postmortem stand out from the reams of books published so far about the financial crisis. Instead of attacking individuals, the Nobel Prize--winning economist faults the system that delivered us to the brink, citing the effects of everything from deregulation to the misaligned incentives of people selling financial products. But Stiglitz has his sights on a larger problem as well. For too long, he argues, economists and policymakers have relied on the erroneous assumptions that markets are fundamentally efficient and material wealth is the best measure of an economy's health. "The model of 19th century capitalism doesn't apply in the 21st," he writes. What we need now is "a new vision"--one that recognizes innovation as the true engine of economic growth and views government as a facilitator, not a roadblock. The crisis has given us an opportunity to rethink our economic order, says Stiglitz. The biggest danger is that we don't seize it.
READ [X]
SKIM
TOSS