The current global financial crisis carries a “made in America” label. In this forthright and incisive book, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Drawing on his academic expertise, his years spent shaping policy in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, and his more recent role as head of a UN Commission charged with reforming the global financial system, Stiglitz then outlines a way forward building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government; addressing the inequalities of the global financial system; and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists. Freefall combines an account of the current crisis with a discussion of the broader economic issues at stake.

Joseph E. Stiglitz received the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics. He is the author of Making Globalization Work, Globalization and Its Discontents, and The Three Trillion Dollar War (with Linda Bilmes). He teaches at Columbia University.

(c) Unversity of Chicago. The World Beyond the Headlines series is a collaborative project of the Center for International Studies, the International House Global Voices Program, the Seminary Co-op Bookstores and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Its aim is to bring scholars and journalists together to consider major international issues and how they are covered in the media.

Recorded Thursday, February 18, 2010 at International House.