Rating: 
Summary: He Actually Won A Nobel in Economics?
Review: Stiglitz does not believe in free markets or that free markets are efficient. His cure for many of the market ills is to expand governments role in business. Stiglitz explains why deregulation caused so many problems in the areas of communications and banking and uses examples today to attempt to prove his points. The problem with Stiglitz's examples of why deregulation is bad, is that the markets were already bad prior to deregulation. The markets were deregulated because they were doing poorly. He describes the economic choices of Reagan as damaging the economic gains of Carter. Not in those words exactly, but real close. His reality is that we were recovering from bad decisions of the Reagan administration, not of previous administration. To be fair of course, all financial decisions and budgets during that period were solely up to the president, congress and the senate were not allowed to vote on those matters at all.(hint: they were democrat controlled and he is a democrat and they did pass the rules and budgets with Reagan) He argues that the bubble of the 1990's was due to irrational exuberance. That the prices of stocks were driven up for no reason and Alan Greenspan spoke and the investors didn't listen. In all of his explanations he fails to mention that during this era of the internet, millions of people began investing in the stock market who had never done so before and wouldn't listen to Greenspan's speechs or react to them. They drove the market, Stiglitz missed the boat. You can't describe today's economy in relation to yesterday's economy, they are barely related by the same currency. Stiglitz does manage to point to a characteristic of capitalism. However he does so with the resolve of a die hard socialist. In a free market, people compete for market share and it drives profits down. Some businesses actually fail and others survive. We knew that. His disdain of freemarkets is just exemplified by his discription of this phenomenon as a failure and an inefficiency. If competition drives profit down, isn't the consumer the winner? The book argues for government control of markets. His view is that several really smart fellows such as himself are infinitely better equiped to dictate business and markets than the thousands of businessman who do it daily. He argues that the government made rules that allowed business to do bad things, so more control by this same government could fix those wrongs. He does understand that government helped companies like World Com steal money, he just argues that this same government group could now help them be honest. If a table spoon is bad, a gallon will cure? It is another socialist view of economics. If you want another guy who says capitalism is bad, socialism is the fix, read this book. If you want a good review of real economics during the 1990's, don't bother.
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