Joseph Stiglitz: A single currency entails a fixed interest rate, whic...

Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.

Joseph Stiglitz

training life people

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Joseph Stiglitz

doctors fate house

It is trust, more than money, that makes the world go round.

Joseph Stiglitz

rounds world

In fact, for just about 1/6 of the cost of an Iraq War, we could have put the social security system on sound financial footings for the next 50 to 75 years. The problems can be managed - but not if we continue to fight this war for another 80 years.

Joseph Stiglitz

financial fighting war

Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently.

Joseph Stiglitz

groups different fundamentals

When Donald Trump campaigned for president, he told the American people that he would be a different type of Republican, that he would take on the political and economic establishment, that he would stand up for working people, that he understood the pain that families all across this country were experiencing. Well, sadly, it was just cheap and dishonest campaign rhetoric that was meant to get votes, nothing more than that.

Joseph Stiglitz

pain country people

What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing.

Joseph Stiglitz

right-thing ifs

One of the real costs of the war is that our security is actually less than it otherwise would have been - ironic, since enhancing security was one of the reasons for going to war. Our armed forces have been depleted - we have been wearing out equipment and using up munitions faster than we have been replacing them; the armed forces face difficult problems in recruitment -by any objective measures,including those used by the armed forces, quality has deteriorated significantly.

Joseph Stiglitz

ironic real war

International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn't go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief.

Joseph Stiglitz

relief focus education

Governments can enhance growth by increasing inclusiveness. A country's most valuable resource is its people. So it is essential to ensure that everyone can live up to their potential, which requires educational opportunities for all.

Joseph Stiglitz

educational opportunity country

The roots of the crisis in East Asia were in private sector decisions. The biggest problems were the misallocation of investment, most notably to speculative real estate, and risky financing, especially borrowing short-term debt on international markets.

Joseph Stiglitz

problem decision real

This Iraq war has been the most "privatized" war in America's history. It has seen the most extensive use of contractors. The contractors have increased the costs; but they have been necessary - the military simply could not have done it on their own. we would have had to increase the size of the military. But the George W. Bush Administration wanted America to believe that it could have a war, essentially for free, without raising taxes, without increasing the size of the armed forces.

Joseph Stiglitz

military war believe

American inequality didn't just happen. It was created.

Joseph Stiglitz

inequality happens

The problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion.

Joseph Stiglitz

economics problem ideology

There have always been two theories about inequality. One is that it reflects just deserts. The other is that there are large elements of exploitation and inequality of opportunities. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the increase in inequality is associated with those negative factors. If it were all social contribution, then when the top did better, they would be contributing to everybody's well-being. That trickle-down hasn't happened. We've seen median income, people in the middle, actually worse off than they were 25 years ago.

Joseph Stiglitz

opportunity people negative

The grand larceny that occurred in Russia, the corruption that resulted in nine or ten people getting enormous wealth through loans-for-shares, was condoned because it allowed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin.

Joseph Stiglitz

wealth corruption people

I've always been sceptical about the notion that the market is a person you can engage in an argument with, and that that person is an intelligent, rational, well-intentioned person: it is fantasy. We know that ... the market is subject to irrational optimism and pessimism, and is vindictive ... You're dealing with a crazy man ... Having got what he wants he will still kill you.

Joseph Stiglitz

crazy intelligent business

I trace the inequality to a particular set of decisions that we took when we lowered the tax rate from 91% down to very low levels at the top, where we stripped away regulations. So the result of that was not a more dynamic economy, but a more unequal society. We tried the experiment of trickle-down. A third of a century later, we can say fairly definitively that it was a failure.

Joseph Stiglitz

regulation levels decision

Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research, more on research on lifestyle drugs than on life saving drugs, and almost nothing on diseases that affect developing countries only. This is not surprising. Poor people cannot afford drugs, and drug companies make investments that yield the highest returns.

Joseph Stiglitz

yield country people

The median family income in the U.S. is lower than it was a quarter-century ago, and if people don't have income, they can't consume, and you can't have a strong economy. There's significant risk - actually it's no longer a risk - a significant likelihood of a marked slowdown not only in China, but also in a lot of other countries like Brazil, which is in recession. All of the other countries that depend on commodities, including Canada, are facing difficulties. So it's hard to see a story of a strong U.S. economy.

Joseph Stiglitz

strong country people

A single currency entails a fixed interest rate, which means countries can't manage their own currency to suit their own needs. You need a variety of institutions to help nations for which the policies aren't well suited. Europe introduced the euro without providing those structures.