Joseph Stiglitz

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Title of New Climate Change Book Says It All: False Alarm

US economist Joseph Stiglitz takes issue with Bjorn Lomborg's new book on how to battle climate change

(Newser) - Bjorn Lomborg has dropped another bomb in the climate-change debate, and one economist is rushing to defuse it. "As a matter of policy, I typically decline to review books that deserve to be panned. You only make enemies," writes Joseph Stiglitz in his New York Times review of...

The Government Needs to Start Buying Mortgages
The Government Needs to Start Buying Mortgages
OPINION

The Government Needs to Start Buying Mortgages

Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Mark Zandi have a plan to fix the housing market

(Newser) - Five years after the mortgage crisis began, housing is still one of the biggest factors dragging the economy down. There's just one option left, economists Joseph Stiglitz and Mark Zandi write in the New York Times : Mass refinancing. "Well over half of all American homeowners with mortgages are...

Dear Top 1%: Payback Is a ...
 Dear Top 1%: 
 Payback Is a ... 
OPINION

Dear Top 1%: Payback Is a ...

Richies are going to regret shafting everyone else: Stiglitz

(Newser) - Revolution is raging in the Middle East, in societies that all have one thing in common: 1% or less of their population controls the lion’s share of the wealth. “As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When...

Obama Needs a B-Team
 Obama Needs  
 a B-Team 
opinion

Obama Needs a B-Team

Dissent among insiders could save his presidency

(Newser) - President Obama’s top advisers have had their chance, and Tuesday proves they blew it, writes American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner. The trouble is that “an in-group of experts often becomes an echo chamber, reinforcing their own prejudices and excluding people with different views,” he notes in the...

Soros to Spend $50M to Reinvent Economics

Fund manager's think tank charged with reinventing the field

(Newser) - George Soros has decided to spend $50 million to launch a new think tank charged with reinventing the field of economics, which the Hungarian-American billionaire calls "a dogma whose time has passed." The Institute of New Economic Thinking, whose board members include luminaries such as Joseph Stiglitz and...

US Too Scared to Take On Monster Banks: Stiglitz

it's 'outrageous' bonuses aren't being curtailed, says economist

(Newser) - Underlying financial problems posed by ever-growing monster banks are worse now than before the economic crisis, but the Obama administration is reluctant to take them on, warns a Nobel Prize-winning economist. The so-called "too-big-to-fail banks" have become even bigger, and their troubles will further threaten the economy, Columbia University...

Reappoint Bernanke: Krugman
 Reappoint Bernanke: Krugman 

Reappoint Bernanke: Krugman

(Newser) - If there’s any justice, Ben Bernanke will get another go-around at the helm of the Federal Reserve, Paul Krugman tells Bloomberg. “He’s earned the right to a second term,” the Nobel laureate says. “When the banking system failed to deliver capital where it was needed,...

Only 2nd Stimulus Can Save US: Stiglitz
Only 2nd Stimulus Can Save US: Stiglitz
OPINION

Only 2nd Stimulus Can Save US: Stiglitz

But Wall Street bailout has made it a dirty word, writes economist

(Newser) - Pundits can't help but ask whether the winter's fiscal stimulus has failed, and for Joseph Stiglitz it has—because the Obama administration made "political compromises that caused it to be less effective than it could have been." For the Nobel Prize-winning economist, there is no option but a...

Taxpayers Lose in Treasury's Toxic Asset Plan
Taxpayers Lose in Treasury's Toxic Asset Plan
OPINION

Taxpayers Lose in Treasury's Toxic Asset Plan

Nobelist Stiglitz blasts Obama adminstration for 'perverse' program

(Newser) - The Obama administration's massive public-private investment plan is good news for banks, good news for investors—and bad news for the taxpayer, writes Joseph Stiglitz. In an op-ed for the New York Times, the Nobel Prize-winning economist accuses the Treasury of "replicating the flawed system" that caused this crisis,...

Whom to Thank for This Mess
 Whom to Thank for This Mess 
opinion

Whom to Thank for This Mess

Bad decisions starting in the '80s triggered the credit crisis

(Newser) - This financial crisis brewed over decades of bad decisions, and, in Vanity Fair, economist Joseph Stiglitz makes sure credit is given where due:
  • In 1987 President Reagan appointed anti-regulation Alan Greenspan to a regulatory post.
  • Greenspan offered the markets a "flood of liquidity" that boosted inflation and caused
...

Bush Sees Success as Iraq War Turns 5

Bush says the war must be won

(Newser) - On the fifth anniversary of launching the shock-and-awe assault that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, President Bush will make a major speech at the Pentagon today, CNN reports. In excerpts from the speech he acknowledges that "the fight in Iraq was faltering," but praises the progress in...

Iraq's Toll Spirals Into Trillions
Iraq's Toll Spirals Into Trillions

Iraq's Toll Spirals Into Trillions

Iraq may cost up to $12.5B each month

(Newser) - In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld envisioned an Iraq war price tag of "something under $50 billion," but a Harvard professor and a Nobel-prize winning economist now pin the total cost at $3 trillion, with a "running cost" of $12.5 billion a month. As the Iraq war enters...

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