- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Allen Lane (7 Sep 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0713999098
- ISBN-13: 978-0713999099
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 351,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
Stiglitz has written an excellent book that can act as a lodestar for those who want to achieve a different and better world (Martin Jacques Guardian )
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Four years after his global best-seller, Joseph Stiglitz now brings the story up to the present, examining how change has occurred even more rapidly since then, proposing solutions and looking into the future. Here he puts forward radical new ways of dealing with the crippling indebtedness of developing countries, a new system of global reserves to overcome international financial instability, and an economically incentivised framework for dealing with energy pollutions which create global warming and which threaten us on a planetary scale. He argues convincingly for the reform of global institutions such as the UN, the IMF and the World Bank to make them truly capable of responding to the problems of our age and shows why treating developing countries more fairly is not only morally right, but because it increases global public goods, is ultimately to the advantage of the developed world too. Above all, Stiglitz argues we need to change the way we think. Now more than ever before, globalization is bringing the countries and the peoples of the world into one interdependent community, bringing with it a need to think and act globally. This trenchant, intellectually powerful and inspiring book is a step in the process.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
For J. Stiglitz, it is a compelling moral case to make globalization work, especially for the poor and the developing countries.
The actual rules of the globalization game have been set by the developed countries in order to protect special individual, corporate and financial interests.
The author sees 6 areas where dramatic changes (with a huge potential of dramatic results) are necessary for the global well-being of our planet.
Poverty relief: it is a shame that billions of human beings are still living in abject conditions. Speaking of intellectual property rights in their face is a deadly joke.
Debt relief and legal help: diminish or eliminate the debt burden of the poorest countries and help the developing countries in creating environmental, judicial, anti-bribery and anti- bank secrecy laws in order to fight corruption.
Fair trade: a fair trade regime is one without subsidies and trade restrictions.
Limitation of liberalization: Markets are not perfect. Therefore, governments must have an active economic role (infrastructure, education, a sound financial and judicial system, a social safety net).
Environmental protection: measures to stop and reduce global warming
A global governance system: a new global social contract, an International Trade Tribunal, an International Bankruptcy Court, a new Global Monetary Reserve System.
The democratic deficit should be compensated by giving the developing countries more voice in the running of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. The draconic anti-Keynesian policies of the IMF should be stopped.
Overall, more transparency, less arms sales and certification of origin are needed.
All those measures should hugely benefit the developing AND the developed countries, although special interests would be hit. Hereafter, a few examples.
Elimination of agricultural subsidies would greatly benefit producers in developing countries and consumers in developed countries. Immigration would dramatically slow. There would be more legal than real fighting. And, last but not least, our planet could be saved.
J. Stiglitz stresses rightly that economic globalization outpaces the political one.
He is especially hard for his home country, `the deficit of last resort'.
This book, written by a superb free mind, should have a long lasting effect on world matters.
It is a must read for all those interested in the future of our planet.
The actual rules of the globalization game have been set by the developed countries in order to protect special individual, corporate and financial interests.
The author sees 6 areas where dramatic changes (with a huge potential of dramatic results) are necessary for the global well-being of our planet.
Poverty relief: it is a shame that billions of human beings are still living in abject conditions. Speaking of intellectual property rights in their face is a deadly joke.
Debt relief and legal help: diminish or eliminate the debt burden of the poorest countries and help the developing countries in creating environmental, judicial, anti-bribery and anti- bank secrecy laws in order to fight corruption.
Fair trade: a fair trade regime is one without subsidies and trade restrictions.
Limitation of liberalization: Markets are not perfect. Therefore, governments must have an active economic role (infrastructure, education, a sound financial and judicial system, a social safety net).
Environmental protection: measures to stop and reduce global warming
A global governance system: a new global social contract, an International Trade Tribunal, an International Bankruptcy Court, a new Global Monetary Reserve System.
The democratic deficit should be compensated by giving the developing countries more voice in the running of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. The draconic anti-Keynesian policies of the IMF should be stopped.
Overall, more transparency, less arms sales and certification of origin are needed.
All those measures should hugely benefit the developing AND the developed countries, although special interests would be hit. Hereafter, a few examples.
Elimination of agricultural subsidies would greatly benefit producers in developing countries and consumers in developed countries. Immigration would dramatically slow. There would be more legal than real fighting. And, last but not least, our planet could be saved.
J. Stiglitz stresses rightly that economic globalization outpaces the political one.
He is especially hard for his home country, `the deficit of last resort'.
This book, written by a superb free mind, should have a long lasting effect on world matters.
It is a must read for all those interested in the future of our planet.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In his latest book "Making Globalization Work", Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist at the World Bank until January 2000, has come up with a series of suggestions for reforming the global economy in the interests of everyone.
Stiglitz's book consists of an introductory chapter ("Another World is Possible") plus 9 other chapters, each dealing with a particular facet of the global economy: Development, Fair Trade, Patents, Primary Resources, the Environment, Multinationals, Debt and Democracy. The strength of the book is that prior to offering policy suggestions in each of those areas, Stiglitz describes the problem in a straightforward and readable manner. So not only is the reader presented with possible solutions (and Stiglitz is rarely proscriptive and offers multiple ideas for solutions laying out the pro's and con's of each), they are getting an education in how the global economy currently functions. The theoretical issues are outlined clearly with ample real world examples to illustrate points.
It would be easy, as some do, to dismiss Stiglitz as an insider turned reformist - a dispenser of sticking plasters - albeit large ones - for a system that has performed in an inherently unfair way over decades, and with particularly miserable results in the last few years. I personally think that there is quite a bit more to him than that. He takes the world as it is, and has looked to radically reform it in a way that would clearly improve the lot of a good deal of those who have been marginalized, particularly in the neo-liberal era of the past four decades. Though I'd personally go further, it is a measure of his radicalism that upon contemplating issues such as the environment, and the problems with regard to getting global agreement, Stiglitz bites the bullet to suggest that what is needed to deal with an intransigent U.S. is sanctions. One can't imagine Gordon Brown, Bono or Geldof, even at their most rhetorical and crowd-pleasing, identifying the problem and the solution in such a blunt manner.
If you have a propensity to pigeon-hole writers the most appropriate nesting place for Stiglitz would be likely be that of Radical Social Democrat along with writers such as Keynes and Galbraith. His book is well worth reading if you have an interest in learning about how the Global Economy actually functions, and if your interested in radical reforms that would help it to function in the interests of the majority of the worlds population. That would certainly be a novelty.
Stiglitz's book consists of an introductory chapter ("Another World is Possible") plus 9 other chapters, each dealing with a particular facet of the global economy: Development, Fair Trade, Patents, Primary Resources, the Environment, Multinationals, Debt and Democracy. The strength of the book is that prior to offering policy suggestions in each of those areas, Stiglitz describes the problem in a straightforward and readable manner. So not only is the reader presented with possible solutions (and Stiglitz is rarely proscriptive and offers multiple ideas for solutions laying out the pro's and con's of each), they are getting an education in how the global economy currently functions. The theoretical issues are outlined clearly with ample real world examples to illustrate points.
It would be easy, as some do, to dismiss Stiglitz as an insider turned reformist - a dispenser of sticking plasters - albeit large ones - for a system that has performed in an inherently unfair way over decades, and with particularly miserable results in the last few years. I personally think that there is quite a bit more to him than that. He takes the world as it is, and has looked to radically reform it in a way that would clearly improve the lot of a good deal of those who have been marginalized, particularly in the neo-liberal era of the past four decades. Though I'd personally go further, it is a measure of his radicalism that upon contemplating issues such as the environment, and the problems with regard to getting global agreement, Stiglitz bites the bullet to suggest that what is needed to deal with an intransigent U.S. is sanctions. One can't imagine Gordon Brown, Bono or Geldof, even at their most rhetorical and crowd-pleasing, identifying the problem and the solution in such a blunt manner.
If you have a propensity to pigeon-hole writers the most appropriate nesting place for Stiglitz would be likely be that of Radical Social Democrat along with writers such as Keynes and Galbraith. His book is well worth reading if you have an interest in learning about how the Global Economy actually functions, and if your interested in radical reforms that would help it to function in the interests of the majority of the worlds population. That would certainly be a novelty.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this book, Stiglitz examines the failures of globalisation and of free trade, the intellectual property rights regime that puts profit before people, the pillage of resources, climate change, the multinational corporations' impact, the debt burden, the reserve system, and the attacks on democracy and sovereignty. He claims the problem is not globalisation but the way it has been managed.
He notes of globalisation post-1990, "unchecked by competition to `win the hearts and minds' of those in the Third World, the advanced industrial countries actually created a global trade regime that helped their special corporate and financial interests, and hurt the poorest countries of the world."
He points out, "the pursuit of self-interest by CEOs, accountants, and investment banks did not lead to economic efficiency, but rather to a bubble accompanied by massive misallocation of resources. And the bubble, when it burst, led, as they almost always do, to recession." This contradicts his later, curiously formal, argument, for capitalism: "Markets are essential; markets help allocate resources, ensuring that they are well deployed." No, profitably, not well.
Third World countries have got deeper into debt. Apart from China, poverty in the developing world has increased since 1980: 40% of the world, 2.6 billion people, are poor. The number of Africans in extreme poverty has doubled. In 2001 the USA and the EU agreed to focus on developing countries' needs. But, as Stiglitz points out, they reneged. He needs to ask, why don't proposed reforms ever work?
He observes, "the European Central Bank pursues a monetary policy that, while it may do wonders for bond markets by keeping inflation low and bond prices high, has left Europe's growth and employment in shambles."
He points out that current economic policy serves the interests of the ruling class. "Wealth generates power, the power that enables the ruling class to maintain that wealth."
He exposes the class conflict at the centre of economic life. He asks, "Where will the people of the developed countries and their governments stand? In support of the few in those countries who own and run the rich corporations, or in support of the billions in the developing countries whose well-being, in some cases, whose very survival, is at stake?"
His analysis is brilliant, but his proposals amount to calling on the ruling classes of the world to act against their own interests: he is proposing reforms he knows won't be accepted.
He notes of globalisation post-1990, "unchecked by competition to `win the hearts and minds' of those in the Third World, the advanced industrial countries actually created a global trade regime that helped their special corporate and financial interests, and hurt the poorest countries of the world."
He points out, "the pursuit of self-interest by CEOs, accountants, and investment banks did not lead to economic efficiency, but rather to a bubble accompanied by massive misallocation of resources. And the bubble, when it burst, led, as they almost always do, to recession." This contradicts his later, curiously formal, argument, for capitalism: "Markets are essential; markets help allocate resources, ensuring that they are well deployed." No, profitably, not well.
Third World countries have got deeper into debt. Apart from China, poverty in the developing world has increased since 1980: 40% of the world, 2.6 billion people, are poor. The number of Africans in extreme poverty has doubled. In 2001 the USA and the EU agreed to focus on developing countries' needs. But, as Stiglitz points out, they reneged. He needs to ask, why don't proposed reforms ever work?
He observes, "the European Central Bank pursues a monetary policy that, while it may do wonders for bond markets by keeping inflation low and bond prices high, has left Europe's growth and employment in shambles."
He points out that current economic policy serves the interests of the ruling class. "Wealth generates power, the power that enables the ruling class to maintain that wealth."
He exposes the class conflict at the centre of economic life. He asks, "Where will the people of the developed countries and their governments stand? In support of the few in those countries who own and run the rich corporations, or in support of the billions in the developing countries whose well-being, in some cases, whose very survival, is at stake?"
His analysis is brilliant, but his proposals amount to calling on the ruling classes of the world to act against their own interests: he is proposing reforms he knows won't be accepted.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Frames Accurately all the Big Questions, and Proposes Many Sound...
This book is not a light read, nor is it based around the detailing and repetition of a single theme. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Ronald Stuart
Passionate but one sided
An easy read and good travel companion, Stiglitz's book is a passionate look at development issues in the developing world, and how in his opinion these countries have suffered... Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2009 by A. AHMAD
Agenda for a better world
After three decades of market fundamentalism, during which the rich have grown richer and the poor have in many countries grown poorer, Professor Stiglitz suggests practical ways... Read more
Published on 21 Jun 2007 by Pipistrel
How we should cope with each other
Joseph Stiglitz continues with his thoughts from his book "Globalization and its Discontents". He describes his discontents with the process of globalisation. Read more
Published on 2 Mar 2007 by Bernd Kotz
Populist guff.
If people of influence and those aspiring to such a position want to ensure that the poor stay poor and wilful manipulation of trade is the norm, this book by Joseph E. Read more
Published on 16 Nov 2006 by S Smyth
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