Globalization and Its Discontents or Leadership Without Easy Answers

Globalization and Its Discontents

Author: Joseph E Stiglitz

This powerful, unsettling book gives us a rare glimpse behind the closed doors of global financial institutions by the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. Renowned academic economist Joseph E. Stiglitz served seven years in Washington, as chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economist at the World Bank. In this book, Stiglitz recounts his experiences in such places as Ethiopia, Thailand, and Russia. He finds repeatedly that the International Monetary Fund puts the interests of its "largest shareholder," the United States, above those of the poorer nations it was designed to serve. This insider's account of global economic policy will be hailed for its courage and honesty. Those seeking to understand why globalization has engendered the hostility of protesters in Seattle and Genoa will find the reasons here. While this book includes no simple formula on how to make globalization work, Stiglitz provides a reform agenda that will provoke debate for years to come.

Author Biography: Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz is professor of economics at Columbia University.

George Soros

A fascinating [and]... profound critique of global financial systems. Eminently readable. I could hardly put it down.

Juan Somavia

Whatever your opinions, you will be engaged by Stiglitz's sharp insights. A must read.

Nicholas Stern

He is one of the most important economists of modern times.

James K. Galbraith

This book is everyone's guide to the misgovernment of globalization. Stiglitz explains it here in plain and compelling language.

Publishers Weekly

Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner and Columbia University economics professor, sees globalization's unrealized potential to eradicate poverty and promote economic growth. In recent years, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization have promoted world financial stability, prosperity and free trade, yet Stiglitz wonders why so many revile these organizations' programs to the point of rioting in the streets. Casting a dispassionately analytical eye at East Asia's and Russia's financial turmoil, he argues that the IMF imposed austere policies that only exacerbated each area's problems. When he finds a similar policy pattern for other countries in crisis, Stiglitz asks how a public institution can ignore growing evidence of a flawed policy and not take action or be held accountable. In answering his own question, Stiglitz blames the "market fundamentalism" that endorses the view that a "free" market solves all problems flawlessly. As Stiglitz authoritatively indicates, one-size-fits-all economic policies can damage rather than help countries with unique financial, governmental and social institutions. He calls for public institutions to reform and become more transparent and responsive to their constituents. Stiglitz shares inside information from cabinet meetings when he served on Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and from his years as chief economist at the World Bank, divulging debates in Washington's conference rooms, naming names and raising his eyebrows at those who refuse to question certain IMF policies' repeated shortcomings. This smart, provocative study contributes significantly to the ongoing globalization debate and provides a model of analytical rigor concerning the process of assisting countries facing the challenges of economic development and transformation. (June 10) Forecast: Stiglitz's impassioned, balanced and informed book is a must-read for all interested in understanding globalization. Professors, economists and students should respond to his author tour and national media interviews, making this a strong business seller. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An insider's account of the ill-considered effort to make a free market of the Third World, an effort that, described here, favors the rich and robs the poor. The title's echo of Sigmund Freud is shrewd, if a little misleading, for whereas Freud's great Civilization and Its Discontents was an encompassing look at the neurosis-making qualities of Western life, Stiglitz's confines itself to the workings of but two policy-making and -effecting organizations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This he does very well. Intimately acquainted with their work-he served as an economic advisor to the Clinton administration and as the World Bank's chief economist and senior vice president-Stiglitz charges that both organizations have abandoned their original missions. "The IMF was supposed to limit itself to matters of macro-economics in dealing with a country . . . and the World Bank was supposed to be in charge of structural issues," he writes, but, with the advent of the free-market-worshipping Reagan administration, both took an activist, even imperial view that demanded that developing countries throw open their doors to capitalism. The results were often disastrous as wealth and resources flowed out of such countries and into the hands of the First World, Stiglitz writes, particularly in the case of newly democratic Russia, which, he notes sadly, "must treat what has happened as pillage of national assets, a theft for which the nation can never be recompensed." Stiglitz's prescriptions for the establishment of a truly global but more equitable economy are unabashedly Keynesian and generally convincing. They include slowing the pace of capitalist expansion until developingcountries can adjust politically and socially to new financial systems, giving more and better aid to those countries, forgiving debt-and thoroughly overhauling the World Bank, IMF, and other instruments of development. Provocative, readable, and sure to earn Stiglitz persona non grata status in certain corridors of power.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Acknowledgments
1	The Promise of Global Institutions	3
2	Broken Promises	23
3	Freedom to Choose?	53
4	The East Asia Crisis: How IMF Policies Brought the World to the verge of a Global Meltdown	89
5	Who Lost Russia?	133
6	Unfair Trade Laws and Other Mischief	166
7	Better Roads to the Market	180
8	The IMF's Other Agenda	195
9	The Way Ahead	214
	Notes	253
	Index	269

Interesting book: Macroeconomics or Understanding Wall Street

Leadership Without Easy Answers

Author: Ronald A Heifetz

The economy uncertain, education in decline, cities under siege, crime and poverty spiraling upward, international relations roiling: we look to leaders for solutions, and when they don't deliver, we simply add their failure to our list of woes. In doing do, we do them and ourselves a grave disservice. We are indeed facing an unprecedented crisis of leadership, Ronald Heifetz avows, but it stems as much from our demands and expectations as from any leader's inability to meet them. His book gets at both of these problems, offering a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers. Fitting the theory and practice of leadership to our extraordinary times, the book promotes a new social contract, a revitalization of our civic life just when we most need it.

Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge, His strategy applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority—activists as well as presidents, managers as well as workers on the front line.

Library Journal

Heifetz (Kennedy Sch. of Government, Harvard Univ.) presents a new theory of leadership for both public and private leaders in tackling complex contemporary problems. Central to his theory is the distinction between routine technical problems, which can be solved through expertise, and adaptive problems, such as crime, poverty, and educational reform, which require innovative approaches, including consideration of values. Four major strategies of leadership are identified: to approach problems as adaptive challenges by diagnosing the situation in light of the values involved and avoiding authoritative solutions, to regulate the level of stress caused by confronting issues, to focus on relevant issues, and to shift responsibility for problems from the leader to all the primary stakeholders. The theory is applied to an analysis of historical accounts of local, national, and international events. An innovative and thoroughgoing work; highly recommmended for graduate and undergraduate collections.-Jane M. Kathman, Coll. of St. Benedict Lib., St. Joseph, Minn.

Booknews

Heifetz (Harvard U.) offers a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers, drawing on research among managers, offices, and politicians in the public and private sectors. He discusses leading with and without authority, values in leadership, the roots of authority, and leaders such as Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, and Mahatma Gandhi. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)