Free Republic

A Nobel Prize-winning economist says that Bitcoin should be outlawed. He states that the currency holds no real function and can easily be brought down by regulation. ROUGE CURRENCY The 2001 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Joseph Stiglitz, voiced some strong opinions about Bitcoin in his latest interview with Bloomberg Television. Stiglitz is a former economic advisor to the Clinton Administration and chief economist of the World Bank; he currently serves as a Professor at Columbia University. Stiglitz told Bloomberg that “Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight.” He continued,...

If Greece continues with austerity, it would be depression without end As the Greek saga continues, many have marveled at Germany’s chutzpah. It received, in real terms, the largest bailout and debt reduction in history and unconditional aid from the U.S. in the Marshall Plan. And yet it refuses even to discuss debt relief. Many, too, have marveled at how Germany has done so well in the propaganda game, selling an image of a long-failed state that refuses to go along with the minimal conditions demanded in return for generous aid.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told CNBC on Monday that the euro zone should stay together but if it breaks apart, it would be better for Germany to leave than for Greece. "While it was an experiment to bring them together, nothing has divided Europe as much as the euro," Stiglitz said in a " Squawk Box " interview. The risk of a sovereign default in Greece has increased after the anti-austerity party Syriza won Sunday's snap elections, raising concerns over the possibility of a Greek exit from the euro zone. Greece is not the only economy struggling under the...

Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues — as it did in a special feature in October — that the magnitude and nature of the country’s inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. ... There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically...

A group of prominent economists today urged President Obama and congressional leaders to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for three years. In a letter to the president and lawmakers they wrote: A higher minimum wage at this juncture will not only provide raises for low-wage workers but would provide some help on the jobs front as well. The group, including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University; former Labor Secretary Robert Reich; and Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), advocate a three-step raise of 85 cents a...

New York - Saying US markets have lost some legitimacy as the world pace setter, the head of a new UN panel on the world financial crisis called for a broadened global finance summit after the G-20 leaders meet in Washington in mid November to resolve the economic meltdown. 'The hope is that it will begin a process, set the agenda and it needs to be a multilateral approach in which the voices of all the countries are heard,' said Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. In close collaboration with the European Union, US President...

America's Superpower Days are Over by Paul Craig Roberts Posted Jan 11, 2006 President George W. Bush has destroyed America's economy, along with America's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush because his estimate was three times higher than...

Britain's political class and commentariat just don't get contemporary America. They don't understand the revolutionary nature of US conservatism and the profundity of its ambitions. They don't understand the extraordinary self-serving venality of corporate America and its Republican allies. They don't understand the ruthless pursuit of radical conservative interests and disregard for all others. They think, like Tony Blair, that America is having an eccentric wobble - and that if George Bush is engaged with, it will sooner or later be business as usual. They should read these two books, by two of America's best economists and most forensic critics,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is best known for his scathing critique of globalization's effect on the world's poor, but now he has turned his ire on an unlikely new target -- himself. Last year, Stiglitz's book "Globalization and its Discontents" took aim at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's policies, making him something of a celebrity economist in places like Latin America. But some in Washington complained that he accepted too little blame for how the bank's policies were shaped when he served as its chief economist. Now the Columbia University professor's new book "The...

Mon October 13, 2003 08:14 AM ET By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is best known for his scathing critique of globalization's effect on the world's poor, but now he has turned his ire on an unlikely new target -- himself. Last year, Stiglitz's book "Globalization and its Discontents" took aim at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's policies, making him something of a celebrity economist in places like Latin America. But some in Washington complained that he accepted too little blame for how the bank's policies were shaped when he served...