A good read, particularly the last bit.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/news/article_1395989.php/US_Nobel_economist_calls_financial_crisis_worst_since_DepressionUS Nobel economist calls financial crisis worst since Depression
Wellington - The current financial crisis is the worst the world has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s and the US Federal Reserve move to cut interest rates will not make much difference, the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Wednesday.
'It will have some impact - it will do a little bit to stem the blood - but it's not addressing the fundamental problems underlying the collapse of the financial sector,' he told Radio New Zealand.
Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, is a former chief of the World Bank and chaired former US president Bill Clinton's council of economic advisers. He is in New Zealand on a speaking tour.
He said the Federal Reserve's move to cut its funds rate by three- quarters of a percentage point was 'just trying to ease the economy down rather than try to address the underlying problems.'
(snip)
'They didn't want Americans to know exactly how bad the war was for the economy so they flooded it with liquidity, they looked the other way with regulations and they deliberately, I think, postponed the problem into the future and now we're paying the price.'