Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, leans to the left and on the central-planning cane of Keynes. He may also be a bit mad, a notion this meandering bit of silliness at TomPaine.com today seems to support. Stiglitz’s latest contention is that the free market is inadequate because the U.S. government* didn’t adequately prepare for the “black tsunami” (that would be Hurricane Katrina), that the Thai government* is better at accepting outside help than is the Bush administration* (due to the latter’s war in Iraq and tax cuts), and that the free market did not in a matter of 2-3 days create hundreds of hotels** to accomadate those fleeing Katrina.

Somehow this leads Stiglitz to conclude that the free market “is often revolting to behold in emergencies” and that the Bush administration* must therefore “join the rest of the world in the fight against poverty and… protect our planet’s environment.”

Oh, that makes perfect sense. And my head hurts.

*Not in any way affiliated with the free market.
**Neither physically possible nor economically feasible.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2005 at 5:19 pm by Baylen Linnekin and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.