Charlie Rose

forrestgump79  11/05/2010 04:21 PM Report

@nhinmx

You are right, I also got the impression that Charlie was less patient listener than he could be. Here are some speculations on why he may have acted that way:

1) Stigliz is an academician. An Important part of his job is lecturing. Maybe, Charlie, to a certain extent, shares the view that Stigliz is rather a distracted ivory tower genius than a though practitioner;

2) Charlie, in general, has a problem with interviewing highly intellectual people (check out his one and only interview with Steve Jobs)

IRISH  05/01/2010 11:04 PM Report

As we have seen empires come and go in history, an outsider looking in to the USA and its last 35 years of governance, economy, financial sector fraud and an ever expanding military-industrial complex can conclude that the trajectory suggests how in the hell is it going to end without a Russian style collapse and a Putin-style dictatorship dressed up as democracy.

robdverity  04/09/2010 12:55 AM Report

The scumbags from Citigroup in the news proving their vileness and deserving of meaningful fines and imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Prince and Robert Rubin were instrumental in their contributions to our recession and misery. Anarchy is needed. These people should not be on the streets - or in their stolen yachts.

nhinmx  03/06/2010 10:37 PM Report

Most interesting interview. Rose seems more intent on showing how well informed he is on this topic than hearing what Stiglitz has to say. What a frustrating interview to listen to...when the interviewee must struggle to get out every point before being interrupted. What ever happened to intelligent, respectful discourse in this type of interview? He did the same thing to Warren. Yikes! Probably the last time I tune in here unless he has a guest I really want to hear. Then I will again have to struggle to hear that guest.

winter  03/05/2010 12:56 AM Report

If financial reform doesn't get enacted during the Obama administration then look no further than Larry Summers for the blame. Probably why he found his way into Obama's senior staff to begin with. Stiglitz I like.

doodahdaze  03/04/2010 07:13 PM Report

robdverity, aka tartufe, aka sock puppet, aka Howard Dean, aka Ralph Nader, .?.?. aka, Lyndon LaRouche??? :)

What does "et al" mean? I know it must be some kind of Latin gibberish. Does it mean i.e. or e.g.?

I think I might add it to my arsenal. .. Maybe retro-fit a rocket launcher.

robdverity  03/04/2010 06:08 AM Report

tuckercook, I too endorse your expressed wisdom. Stiglitz ended the session predicting a repeat (moral hazard) in five or ten years time. I too (a la doodah) have called for anarchy. The financial wise-guys a la Robert Rubin, Citigroup, et al are not harmless children. They have done real human damage and should be held accountable. The elite cloak of armor protection of opm other-people's-money should not protect them from legitimate investigation, trial, fines and incarceration when justified. I include the sacrosanct, the licensed-to-steal like Henry Paulson et al that blatantly pulled off the biggest heist in history without a gun. The ineffectiveness of his heist is proof that that's what it was - a bailout of his cronies at Goldman Sachs et al - nothing more.

A culture that inspires, condones the extant kind of moral decay in our political and financial institutions in some respect deserves the inevitable outcome.

I'm for class-warfare. They - the financial wise-guys and the top one per cent declared it - I'm ready to answer their call. Start with yacht owners. (A la Bernie Madoff as an example.) Anybody that owns a yacht should automatically be subpoenaed - cause you know they've engaged in sharp, predatory, and under-handed dealing (9 of 10 at least). William Jennings Bryan was right.

Patriots arise!

Ricardo_Amaral  03/04/2010 05:37 AM Report

Great interview Charlie. Joseph Stiglitz is among my very short list of economists that I pay attention to what they have to say.

I have no idea what Barack Obama is waiting for to get rid off Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.

I would replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner with Joseph Stiglitz and I would replace Larry Summers with Paul Krugman.

When I listen to Joseph Stiglitz speak I find amazing how we are thinking in the same wavelength.

Over the years I wrote many articles about Brazil adopting the “New Asian Currency” - Including the following article:

RGE Monitor – July 9, 2009 - Brazil, China and the New Asian Currency - Written by Ricardo C. Amaral

http://www.roubini.com/emergingmarkets-monitor/257250#183003

You can see the list of other articles about Brazil adopting a mega currency at:

Author and Columnist: Ricardo C. Amaral

http://brazzilnews.blogspot.com/

Yes, it would be a piece of cake for the major Asian countries to create almost overnight a new Currency Union similar to the euro and adopt a “New Asian Currency” to compete with the euro and the US dollar.

.

doodahdaze  03/03/2010 08:47 PM Report

I hear you loud and clear, tuckercook.

I just wish 'the powers that be' would too.

1929 they called it a "CRASH".

2008 they called it a "CRISIS".

The same damn thing (in effect).

I'm ready to go to war, I feel like hurtin' someone.

tuckercook  03/03/2010 03:03 PM Report

I was happy to see Charlie Rose and Joseph Stiglitz refer to PBS' Frontline documentary entitled, The Warning, which was originally broadcast on October 20, 2009 and re-broadcast last week on WNET, NY. In a straightforward fashion, this documentary depicts how the dismal science of market economics is not immune from producing its own junta mmentality. When their pedantry is on the cusp of being threatened publicly, the trio of Greenspan, Rubin and Summers knows how to give the Spanish Inquisition a run for its money.

The Warning, is the story of an honorable woman, Brooksley Born, Chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, who tried to avert a political economic disaster greater in its perniciousness than the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, albeit she suffered the same lack of success as our nation's counter-terrorism agencies did on that horrible day.

As it happens, the roots of both failures are inherently the same. If those who do not believe in the efficacy of government, under any circumstances, are put in charge, what else should we expect but legislative grid lock, disorder and chaos in which white collar conspiratorial crime is able to robe itself in moral as well as political legitimacy. It is happening today,in the health care business, as well as in the financial services markets.

So long as these people are free to operate inside a proprietary "black box," which is completely unregulated, how do we not know that certain Wall Street firms are not gambling - creating and selling - derivatives based on the number of people it expects to die due to the lack of health care insurance?

Show me, what a homeowner who would agree that we not police fraud among home improvement contactors: no one would. Yet, that is what former Fed Chairman Allen Greenspan believed throughout his life in public service. Carefully consider what he wrote 47 years ago, in 1963, when he was 31 years old. He espoused, the followsing:

"Protection of the consumer against 'dishonest and unscrupulous business practices’ has become a cardinal ingredient of welfare statism. Left to their own devices, it is alleged, businessmen would attempt to sell unsafe goods and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings. Thus, it is argued, [regulatory] agencies are indispensable, if the consumer is to be protected from the ‘greed’ of the businessman.

But it is precisely the ‘greed’ of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking, which is the unexcelled protector of the consumer.

What collectivists refuse to recognize is that it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputations for honest dealings and quality product. Since the market-value of a going business is measured by its money-making potential, reputation or ‘good will’ is as much an asset as its physical plant and equipment. . . .The market value of a brokerage firm is even more closely tied [than a food or drug firm] to its good-will assets. Securities worth hundreds of millions of dollars are traded every day over the telephone. The slightest doubt as to the trustworthiness of a broker’s word or commitment would put him out of business overnight.” *

About the same time, when Allen Greenspan was bowing to the perpetuity of the providential powers of the free market place, a wise old man said to Bill Buckley, "What is wrong with socialism is socialism; what is wrong with capitalism is capitalists.

As Edmund Burke knew about human nature over 200 years ago: pure individual libertarianism is anarchism. Hardened conservatives recognize that "regulation" is when justly applied no more than another name for the state's right to exercise prudent police power. That white collar businessmen might be too tempted by the notion of making a "quick killing" in the course of duping innocent, uninformed investors, while no one is looking, should be of no surprise to anyone with normal intelligence and common sense. Well, that is what the health care insurance industry has been doing to the average American family for the past fifteen years.

Who could have supposed the nation's top conservative economist was such a fool, and that his injudicious opinion would be shared so ferociously by Washington and Wall Street elites, who have so deluded themselves at civilization's expense.

My gravitas has not changed since September 2008. It will not until health care reform is passed, derivatives are regulated and hedge funds such as Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), who can stealthily leverage $5 billion into $1 trillion in debt are stopped from operating with the unfettered sanction of the federal government. They say there are five lobbyists from the financial services industry for every congressman in Washington. They appear to they have coerced key political operatives in the Congress and Treasury Department, have they infiltrated the halls of the Department of Justice, too?

Is not the complete absence of Wall Street derivative-fraud indictments one of the deepest roots from which sprouts the nation's lack of faith in the efficacy of both representative branches of the federal government?*

* See Ayn Rand, contributing editor, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, "The Assault on Integrity," by Allen Greenspan, Signet Books, NY, 1967, p. 118 (emphasis added) and The PBS Newshour, "Former Regulator Talks Fraud and the Big Bank Getaway with Paul Simon," air date February 17, 2010.

REMant  03/03/2010 12:42 PM Report

While he's probably right about the present situation, as a Keynesian he is completely wrong about the antidote. How anyone can have written a book about the cost of the Iraq War and now be arguing for more spending and more debt is beyond me. Or be blaming monetarists. I wrote him when the previous book appeared for failing to take into account the likely macro consequences we are feeling now, and which have accompanied every such conflict in our history. I gather that Krugman, Galbraith, Simon Johnson and Stiglitz believe the admin is too closely tied to monetarism, and we agree on that, but Keynesians are no better. Long before Keynes published the General Theory ppl were saying that thrift was bad - probably a continuation of the general anti-Victorian or anit-Weberian drift of the post WWI period - as if the Depression were simply a matter of loss of appetite. I can think of two film shorts made along that line in the early years of the Depression, and I'm sure there was a lot more such written. But the Depression was rather an inability to pay debt, just as it is now, a situation brought on by too much European gold in circulation during the '20s as a result of WWI, and the easy credit it fostered. By the same token Wall St types believe, now as then, that money is simply "on the sidelines" rather than that mkt "value" has been destroyed, i.e., prices permanently deflated. I heard one of their number a couple days ago opine that the recent earthquake would be a blessing to the Chilean economy, as if a good part of the country weren't destroyed by it. Proof of their inherent masochism, you might as well argue that we should all do evil so good will come. They wear their economics on their sleeves, these ppl. If you want to put our citizens to work or in school, you will have to tax others to do it, not print or borrow money, let prices drop, and interest rates rise, in other words, cut your losses, which will elevate the value of productivity, and perhaps encourage it. As the Austrians and those influenced by them, such as Robbins and Rothbard, believed the failure to do this prolongs downturns. Seven or eight years of FDR's "stimulus" programs did little to dent the Depression. It took the deprivation, saving and the imperative to be productive in five years of world war to do that. And in my view, this time things could be worse, because we have lost so much inherent capacity.

EdKrause  03/03/2010 12:36 PM Report

I wish Obama had him and Krugman posted in the White House to counter Geitner and the arrogance of Summers; though I suppose there might be an argument (and some poetic justice) to let the guys who were against the regulation that might have averted the catastrophe, dig the country out from beneath it.

doodahdaze  03/03/2010 12:04 PM Report

Amen Brother Charlie. FINALLY! An intellectual who can speak in plain language. Put this man's face (Professor Stiglitz) on the dollar bill!

He addresses ALL the issues so effortlessly. He doesn't stick his head in the sand (like Larry Summers), and pretend to only see half the problem. Monetarism is the the way we are, and there's no going back to gold, just as much as going back to the horse and buggy, and therefore there is no more room for the tolerance of piracy. "CRISIS", the new 'sword' of modern pirates (the CURRENT Financial Industry). It's time to purge the system, pull them out by the roots of their hair, and burn them at the stake. A rebirth, of REASONABLE incentives, to establish real value again. A new 'GI BILL' for veterans of combat. It's all about cost/benefit, in the private sector AS WELL as the public sector.