Caída libre / Freefall

La llamada Gran Recesión ha afectado a más personas que ninguna otra  crisis desde la Gran Depresión. En Estados Unidos, las políticas públicas deficientes y una falta de escrúpulos generalizada han  favorecido el desastre financiero actual, cuyo contagio al resto del planeta ha sido devastador.

Quién mejor que Joseph Stiglitz para diagnosticar una situación tan  compleja de un modo tan accesible. Sus consideraciones acerca del nuevo  papel que deben asumir gobiernos y mercados, de la urgente necesidad de  regulación y del distinto modo en que se debería gestionar la  globalización tienen un peso especial dentro de la batalla de ideas que  conformará el «nuevo mundo» destinado a emerger de esta crisis.

Caída libre da voz a todas esas personas que vieron indignadas  cómo Wall Street acababa con hogares y empleos; cómo los gobiernos  fueron incapaces de frenar la crisis y no dieron más pasos de los  estrictamente necesarios; cómo los banqueros se contradecían pidiendo  que el Estado les sacara del apuro al mismo tiempo que se oponían a una  regulación menos propicia a futuras crisis. Stiglitz ofrece alternativas  para lograr una economía próspera y una sociedad moral para el futuro.

An incisive look at the global economic crisis, our flawed response, and the implications for the world’s future prosperity.

The Great Recession, as it has come to be called, has impacted more people worldwide than any crisis since the Great Depression. Flawed government policy and unscrupulous personal and corporate behavior in the United States created the current financial meltdown, which was exported across the globe with devastating consequences. The crisis has sparked an essential debate about America’s economic missteps, the soundness of this country’s economy, and even the appropriate shape of a capitalist system.

Few are more qualified to comment during this turbulent time than Joseph E. Stiglitz. Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Stiglitz is “an insanely great economist, in ways you can’t really appreciate unless you’re deep into the field” (Paul Krugman, New York Times). In Freefall, Stiglitz traces the origins of the Great Recession, eschewing easy answers and demolishing the contention that America needs more billion-dollar bailouts and free passes to those “too big to fail,” while also outlining the alternatives and revealing that even now there are choices ahead that can make a difference. The system is broken, and we can only fix it by examining the underlying theories that have led us into this new “bubble capitalism.”

Ranging across a host of topics that bear on the crisis, Stiglitz argues convincingly for a restoration of the balance between government and markets. America as a nation faces huge challenges—in health care, energy, the environment, education, and manufacturing—and Stiglitz penetratingly addresses each in light of the newly emerging global economic order. An ongoing war of ideas over the most effective type of capitalist system, as well as a rebalancing of global economic power, is shaping that order. The battle may finally give the lie to theories of a “rational” market or to the view that America’s global economic dominance is inevitable and unassailable.

For anyone watching with indignation while a reckless Wall Street destroyed homes, educations, and jobs; while the government took half-steps hoping for a “just-enough” recovery; and while bankers fell all over themselves claiming not to have seen what was coming, then sought government bailouts while resisting regulation that would make future crises less likely, Freefall offers a clear accounting of why so many Americans feel disillusioned today and how we can realize a prosperous economy and a moral society for the future.