As part of our effort to provide insight into the ongoing credit crisis, we present a talk just given at Oxford University by the Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (iTunes – Rss Feed). The author of Globalization and its Discontents uses the talk as an opportunity to outline the events that contributed to the global credit crisis, and the future regulations that could get us back on track. The talk runs a good hour, and it takes about 20-25 minutes for Stiglitz to really focus on the credit crunch, and about 45 minutes before he starts discussing tangible solutions. Don’t expect any magic bullets, any short term solutions that will get the current crisis under control. It’s more pragmatic long-term solutions that you’ll find here.
Related Content:
The Financial Crisis Explained
Ten Days That Shook The Financial World
This American Life Demystifies The Credit Crisis
What’s been lost so far in all the uncertainty and confusion of this country’s current financial fiasco?
The fact that a cadre of white collar criminals are still out at large, just possibly pulling off one of the greatest heists in this country’s history?
I think so.
I also imagine them as a well funded group of characters –politically connected too, undoubtedly set for life now – all of the money needed for a lifetime of comfort and leisure, secured in just 3 to 5 years of fraud and deceit.
Too many underestimate the untempered short term profit motive – to get in and out quickly, making millions, no wait, some making billions in the process.
While many of us now reel in the uncertainty of our own short and long term financial security, the party’s just begun for those who’ve perfected stealing with a pencil.
I’ll tell you what I think is missing from this news story thus far. Mortgage and banking CEO’s in suits being led away in hand cuffs, a new breed of no-nonsense regulators being introduced to the American people, and how about a unified American voice declaring enough is enough!
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
Gary E. Geraci
http://afederalwhistleblowerstory.blogspot.com/