Joseph Stiglitz: Poster Boy

Just back from a short haul flight to Spain.  Reading the BA Business Mag, I stumbled across this  (doubleclick photo to see the full-size picture):

Yes, it's Joseph Stiglitz: Poster Boy!

Actually, it's the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, economist and professor at Columbia University.

In a short interview, he talks about life and views of the world and the financial crisis, with a key section on the bank bailout:

You’re very critical of the bank bailouts worldwide and
particularly in the US. Why?

The main reason is that
the bailout failed to do what it was supposed to do, which is rekindle
lending. It gave money unnecessarily to the banks without getting
anything in return, the result of which is that we have a much bigger
national debt than we otherwise would have had, if we’d done it better.
And we didn’t have any vision of where we wanted the financial system to
go, so we’ve wound up with a more distorted financial system with more
weight on the gambling institutions and less weight on the institutions
that actually create a better economy. Because we bailed out the banks,
and not just the banks but the bankers, shareholders and bondholders, we
enhanced the problem of moral hazard — we created a system of ersatz
capitalism where we socialised the losses and privatised the gains.

Read the full interview here.