Joseph Stiglitz Quotes
The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid.
Stiglitz, Joseph E., and Linda J. Bilmes. The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.
At the time our strongest allies in the Middle East were Monarchies, dictatorships, and Principalities. See {586706}
Buleihi is one of the few Arab intellectuals who are not totally negative about Western colonialism and interference in the affairs of other countries who he believes benefit from the Western influence and have developed such an insularity that they will not be changed or modernized otherwise.
This admission of policy failure is very unusual—especially when the speech is given abroad.
The “Vegas Rules” emanate from the slogan and practice that “Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
He does not completely blame the United States or the West but places a large part of the blame on the corrupt Pakistani governemnt and military which would not curtail the growing Jhadi menace becasue they wanted to use them as a weapn against India, which gained independence at that same time but has been much more successful and democratic.
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American economist, public policy analyst, and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and is a former member and chairman of the (US president's) Council of Economic Advisers. He is known for his support of Georgist public finance theory and for his critical view of the management of globalization, of laissez-faire economists (whom he calls "free-market fundamentalists"), and of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
