Authors: Joseph E. Stiglitz
ISBN-13: 9780393075960, ISBN-10: 0393075966
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Date Published: January 2010
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz is the author of Making Globalization Work; Globalization and Its Discontents; and, with Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War. He was chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and served as senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
An incisive look at the global economic crisis, our flawed response, and the implications for the world’s future prosperity.
Freefall has three standout strengths. First, it is a powerful indictment of Wall Street, the United States financial sector and the Federal Reserve Board. Second, it offers a reluctant but persuasive elaboration of how the Obama administration decided to embrace the financial sector and the Fed, continuing and enlarging both the bailout and the too-big-to-fail philosophy that it inherited from George W. Bush. Finally, it is a blunt attack on Stiglitz's own profession, for transforming "scientific discipline" into "free-market capitalism's biggest cheerleader"…Stiglitz's virtue is that he minces few words.
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxvii
Chapter 1 The Making of a Crisis 1
Chapter 2 Freefall and Its Aftermath 27
Chapter 3 A Flawed Response 58
Chapter 4 The Mortgage Scam 77
Chapter 5 The Great American Robbery 109
Chapter 6 Avarice Triumphs over Prudence 147
Chapter 7 A New Capitalist Order 184
Chapter 8 From Global Recovery to Global Prosperity 210
Chapter 9 Reforming Economics 238
Chapter 10 Toward a New Society 275
Afterword 299
Notes 345
Index 417