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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJoseph Stiglitz: Jail the Bankers
Joseph Stiglitz: Man who ran World Bank calls for bankers to face the musicJoseph Stiglitz tells Ben Chu that rogue financiers have proven that regulation must get tougher
By Ben Chu
The Independent UK
The Barclays Libor scandal may have shocked the British public, but Joseph Stiglitz saw it coming decades ago. And he's convinced that jailing bankers is the best way to curb market abuses. A towering genius of economics, Stiglitz wrote a series of papers in the 1970s and 1980s explaining how when some individuals have access to privileged knowledge that others don't, free markets yield bad outcomes for wider society. That insight (known as the theory of "asymmetric information" won Stiglitz the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. And he has leveraged those credentials relentlessly ever since to batter at the walls of "free market fundamentalism".
It is a crusade that has taken Stiglitz from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the Clinton White House, to the World Bank, to the Occupy Wall Street camp and now, to London, to promote his new book The Price of Inequality.
And kind fortune has engineered it so that Stiglitz's UK trip has coincided with a perfect example of the repellent consequences of asymmetric information.
When traders working for Barclays rigged the Libor interest rate and flogged toxic financial derivatives using their privileged position in the financial system to make profits at the expense of their customers they were unwittingly proving Stiglitz right.
The rest: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/joseph-stiglitz-man-who-ran-world-bank-calls-for-bankers-to-face-the-music-7902920.html
midnight
(26,624 posts)their ignorance...
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)(plus one facebook post), jail ain't enough. There needs to be fines that expropriate the ill gotten WEALTH of these scumbags. Hell, it's our money anyway, ESPECIALLY after '08.
canuckledragger
(1,671 posts)here's a viable solution too!
alterfurz
(2,475 posts)...I call them 'French Revolution re-enactors.'" -- Andy Borowitz
Iggy
(1,418 posts)The amateur left here and elsewhere just don' get it.
MONEY is the only thing the wealthy class truly cares about. impact their wealth with fines and slow down their
ability to make a profit and you'll get their attention toot sweet.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Access to information that others don't have, supplied by his employment/membership in various privileged institutions, undoubtedly enabled him to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Had he stayed in Gary, IN and worked hard, it is doubtful that he would have succeeded to that extent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz
WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)i.e. the "Insiders Rule" rules. That's been going on for far too long, and if you're not feeling the pain from it, I envy you.
Either that, or we accept your version of 'reality' and surrender to the inevitable.
I refuse.
Care to join?
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Though you wouldn't know it from reading western economics, since they seemed to ignore centuries of trading by Southern European, Islamic, Indian, and Chinese cultures.
IIRC, not until the 1990s did US economists start to study how information and the associated technological change influenced the dynamic growth and change of the overall economy.
Which means that the classical economics of capitalism, communism, and socialism are pretty much BS.
WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)Jesus.
This will get alerted on, I'm sure. I devoutly hope it lasts long enough for you to read this: Fuck that, and fuck you for espousing it.
You can wrap your bullshit around poor interpretations of other economies, but the fact remains: the few in the know have been stealing from the most who don't. Period, end of file. Fact.
'FarCenter' assumes a deep adherence to the status quo. I'm no Marxist, but as Harry Truman once said, how many times do you have to be hit in the head before you turn around and see who's hitting you?
Letting the insiders do their thing because it's "essential to the economy" is, by far and away, the weakest shit I've ever read here, and I've been here for more than ten years.
"Which means that the classical economics of capitalism, communism, and socialism are pretty much BS. "
...which leaves you free to spout you support for the current vein of capitalism.
I call bullshit, and pray that the jury which reviews this agrees.
WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)Iggy
(1,418 posts)communism had actually been put into practice anywhere on a large scale.
I hope you're not referring to the old Soviet Union. hooooh baby! that was a real threat, eh?!
WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)Me again.
No response?
Trillo
(9,154 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Its as if a bank robber signs an agreement to pay Justice a cut in his robberies and gets off scott free.
Signed agreement stating DoJ will not prosecute Barclay's criminally for LIBOR manipulation, LIEBORGATE
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/documents/Barclaysagreement.pdf
WillyT
(72,631 posts)WilliamPitt
(58,179 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)I can't even begin to understand why this Admin would agree to such a thing (except by going to my deeply cynical, suspicious dark side).
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)and seems to be authentic
source here:
http://corporatecrimereporter.com/
Robert Riech mentions the agreement here.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/156201/libor:_the_wall_street_scandal_of_all_scandals
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Constituent
(3 posts)A couple of years back, Directors of a business that about fifty people worked for (myself included), exploited their workers, by using holes in Employment law to withhold staff wages and ultimately cheat employees out of the money that they had worked hard to earn ( http://bobblackmanmp.info/ ).
Despite Employment Tribunals agreeing that staff were treated badly, the High Court said that they are powerless to help because their is noting stopping this in law, whilst the local MP wasn't interested in helping.
But, now, to rub salt in the wound, the local MP, and even Government officials simply try to kick the issue into the long grass, by claiming that it's not in the public interest to do anything about this matter, whilst refusing to have the Directors struck off, failing to introduce new laws to outlaw these kinds of sharp practices, and not even bothering to call for an inquiry into this scandal.