Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
Name	World Bank
Size	200px
Established	July 1944
Type	International organization
Status	Treaty
Purpose	Crediting
Location	Washington DC
Membership	187 countries (IBRD) 170 countries (IDA)
Leader title	President
Leader name	Robert B. Zoellick
Main organ	Board of Directors
Parent organization	World Bank Group
Website	worldbank.org
Remarks	}}

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes. The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty. By law, all of its decisions must be guided by a commitment to promote foreign investment, international trade and facilitate capital investment.

The World Bank differs from the World Bank Group, in that the World Bank comprises only two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), whereas the latter incorporates these two in addition to three more: International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

History

The World Bank is one of five institutions created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. The International Monetary Fund, a related institution, is the second. Delegates from many countries attended the Bretton Woods Conference. The most powerful countries in attendance were the United States and United Kingdom, which dominated negotiations.

Although both are based in Washington, D.C., the World Bank is, by custom, headed by an American, while the IMF is led by a European.

1945–1968

From its conception until 1967 the bank undertook a relatively low level of lending. Fiscal conservatism and careful screening of loan applications was common. Bank staff attempted to balance the priorities of providing loans for reconstruction and development with the need to instill confidence in the bank.

Bank president John McCloy selected France to be first recipient of World Bank aid; two other applications from Poland and Chile were rejected. The loan was for $250 million, half the amount requested and came with strict conditions. Staff from the World Bank monitored the use of the funds, ensuring that the French government would present a balanced budget and give priority of debt repayment to the World Bank over other governments. The United States State Department told the French government that communist elements within the Cabinet needed to be removed. The French Government complied with this diktat and removed the Communist coalition government. Within hours the loan to France was approved.

The Marshall Plan of 1947 caused lending by the bank to change as many European countries received aid that competed with World Bank loans. Emphasis was shifted to non-European countries and until 1968, loans were earmarked for projects that would enable a borrower country to repay loans (such projects as ports, highway systems, and power plants).

1968–1980

From 1968 to 1980, the bank concentrated on meeting the basic needs of people in the developing world. The size and number of loans to borrowers was greatly increased as loan targets expanded from infrastructure into social services and other sectors.

These changes can be attributed to Robert McNamara who was appointed to the presidency in 1968 by Lyndon B. Johnson. McNamara imported a technocratic managerial style to the Bank that he had used as United States Secretary of Defense and President of the Ford Motor Company. McNamara shifted bank policy toward measures such as building schools and hospitals, improving literacy and agricultural reform. McNamara created a new system of gathering information from potential borrower nations that enabled the bank to process loan applications much faster. To finance more loans, McNamara told bank treasurer Eugene Rotberg to seek out new sources of capital outside of the northern banks that had been the primary sources of bank funding. Rotberg used the global bond market to increase the capital available to the bank. One consequence of the period of poverty alleviation lending was the rapid rise of third world debt. From 1976 to 1980 developing world debt rose at an average annual rate of 20%.

In 1980, the World Bank Administrative Tribunal was established to decide on disputes between the World Bank Group and its staff where allegation of non-observance of contracts of employment or terms of appointment had not been honoured.

1980–1989

In 1980, A.W. Clausen replaced McNamara after being nominated by US President Jimmy Carter. Clausen replaced a large number of bank staffers from the McNamara era and instituted a new ideological focus in the bank. The replacement of Chief Economist Hollis B. Chenery by Anne Krueger in 1982 marked a notable policy shift at the bank. Krueger was known for her criticism of development funding as well as third world governments as rent-seeking states.

Lending to service third world debt marked the period of 1980–1989. Structural adjustment policies aimed at streamlining the economies of developing nations were also a large part of World Bank policy during this period. UNICEF reported in the late 1980s that the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank were responsible for the "reduced health, nutritional and educational levels for tens of millions of children in Asia, Latin America, and Africa".

1989–present

From 1989, World Bank policy changed in response to criticism from many groups. Environmental groups and NGOs were incorporated in the lending of the bank in order to mitigate the effects of the past that prompted such harsh criticism.

Leadership

The President of the Bank, currently Robert B. Zoellick, is responsible for chairing the meetings of the Boards of Directors and for overall management of the Bank. Traditionally, the Bank President has always been a US citizen nominated by the United States, the largest shareholder in the bank. The nominee is subject to confirmation by the Board of Governors, to serve for a five-year, renewable term.

The Executive Directors, representing the Bank's member countries, make up the Board of Directors, usually meeting twice a week to oversee activities such as the approval of loans and guarantees, new policies, the administrative budget, country assistance strategies and borrowing and financing decisions.

The Vice Presidents of the Bank are its principal managers, in charge of regions, sectors, networks and functions. There are 24 Vice-Presidents, three Senior Vice Presidents and two Executive Vice Presidents.

List of Presidents

Not all World Bank Presidents have banking experience with some as political appointments.

! Name	! Dates	! Nationality	Field
Eugene Meyer	1946–1946		Newspaper publisher
John J. McCloy	1947–1949		Lawyer and US Assistant Secretary of War
Eugene R. Black, Sr.	1949–1963
	1963–1968		Bank executive with First Boston Corporation
Robert McNamara	1968–1981		US Defense Secretary, business executive with Ford Motor Company
Alden W. Clausen	1981–1986		Lawyer, bank executive with Bank of America
Barber Conable	1986–1991		New York State Senator and US Congressman
	1991–1995		Bank executive with J.P. Morgan
Sir James Wolfensohn	1995–2005		Corporate lawyer and banker
Paul Wolfowitz	2005–2007		Various cabinet and government positions; US Ambassador to Indonesia, US Deputy Secretary of Defense
Robert B. Zoellick	2007–present		Bank executive with Goldman Sachs, Deputy Secretary of State and US Trade Representative

List of chief economists

Hollis B. Chenery (1972–1982)

Anne Osborn Krueger (1982–1986)

Stanley Fischer (1988–1990)

Lawrence Summers (1991–1993)

Michael Bruno (1993–1996)

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1997–2000)

Nicholas Stern (2000–2003)

François Bourguignon (2003–2007)

Justin Yifu Lin (June 2008– )

Members

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has 187 member countries, while the International Development Association (IDA) has 168 members. Each member state of IBRD should be also a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and only members of IBRD are allowed to join other institutions within the Bank (such as IDA).

Voting power

In 2010, voting powers at the World Bank were revised to increase the voice of developing countries, notably China. The countries with most voting power are now the United States (15.85%), Japan (6.84%), China (4.42%), Germany (4.00%), the United Kingdom (3.75%), France (3.75%), and India (2.91%). Under the changes, known as 'Voice Reform - Phase 2', other countries that saw significant gains included South Korea, Turkey, Mexico, Singapore, Greece, Brazil, India, and Spain. Most developed countries' voting power was reduced, while countries including Nigeria, United States', Russia's and Saudi Arabia's voting power was unchanged.

The changes were brought about with the goal of making voting more universal in regards to standards, rule-based with objective indicators, and transparent among other things. Now, developing countries have an increased voice in the "Pool Model," backed especially by Europe. Additionally, voting power is based on economic size in addition to International Development Association contributions.

Poverty reduction strategies

For the poorest developing countries in the world, the bank's assistance plans are based on poverty reduction strategies; by combining a cross-section of local groups with an extensive analysis of the country's financial and economic situation the World Bank develops a strategy pertaining uniquely to the country in question. The government then identifies the country's priorities and targets for the reduction of poverty, and the World Bank aligns its aid efforts correspondingly.

Forty-five countries pledged US$25.1 billion in "aid for the world's poorest countries", aid that goes to the World Bank International Development Association (IDA) which distributes the loans to eighty poorer countries. While wealthier nations sometimes fund their own aid projects, including those for diseases, and although IDA is the recipient of criticism, Robert B. Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, said when the loans were announced on December 15, 2007, that IDA money "is the core funding that the poorest developing countries rely on".

Clean Technology Fund management

The World Bank has been assigned temporary management responsibility of the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), focused on making renewable energy cost-competitive with coal-fired power as quickly as possible, but this may not continue after UN's Copenhagen climate change conference in December, 2009, because of the Bank's continued investment in coal-fired power plants.

Clean Air Initiative

Clean Air Initiative (CAI) is a World Bank initiative to advance innovative ways to improve air quality in cities through partnerships in selected regions of the world by sharing knowledge and experiences. It includes electric vehicles.

United Nations Development Business

Based on an agreement between the United Nations and the World Bank in 1981, ''Development Business'' became the official source for World Bank Procurement Notices, Contract Awards, and Project Approvals. In 1998, the agreement was re-negotiated, and included in this agreement was a joint venture to create an electronic version of the publication via the World Wide Web. Today, ''Development Business'' is the primary publication for all major multilateral development banks, United Nations agencies, and several national governments, many of whom have made the publication of their tenders and contracts in ''Development Business'' a mandatory requirement. Currently, the subscription to "online version only" is not free, but costs US$ 550.

The World Bank or the World Bank Group is also a sitting observer in the United Nations Development Group.

Criticism

The World Bank has long been criticized by non-governmental organizations, such as the indigenous rights group Survival International, and academics, including its former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz who is equally critical of the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury Department, US and other developed country trade negotiators. Critics argue that the so-called free market reform policies which the Bank advocates are often harmful to economic development if implemented badly, too quickly ("shock therapy"), in the wrong sequence or in weak, uncompetitive economies.

In ''Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations'' (1996), Catherine Caufield argued that the assumptions and structure of the World Bank harms southern nations. Caufield criticized its formulaic recipes of "development". To the World Bank, different nations and regions are indistinguishable and ready to receive the "uniform remedy of development". She argued that to attain even modest success, Western practices are adopted and traditional economic structures and values abandoned. A second assumption is that poor countries cannot modernize without money and advice from abroad.

A number of intellectuals in developing countries have argued that the World Bank is deeply implicated in contemporary modes of donor and NGO imperialism, and that its intellectual contributions function to blame the poor for their condition.

One of the strongest criticisms of the World Bank has been the way in which it is governed. While the World Bank represents 186 countries, it is run by a small number of economically powerful countries. These countries choose the leadership and senior management of the World Bank, and so their interests dominate the bank.

The World Bank has dual roles that are contradictory: that of a political organization and that of a practical organization. As a political organization, the World Bank must meet the demands of donor and borrowing governments, private capital markets, and other international organizations. As an action-oriented organization, it must be neutral, specializing in development aid, technical assistance, and loans. The World Bank's obligations to donor countries and private capital markets have caused it to adopt policies which dictate that poverty is best alleviated by the implementation of "market" policies.

In the 1990s, the World Bank and the IMF forged the Washington Consensus, policies which included deregulation and liberalization of markets, privatization and the downscaling of government. Though the Washington Consensus was conceived as a policy that would best promote development, it was criticized for ignoring equity, employment and how reforms like privatization were carried out. Many now agree that the Washington Consensus placed too much emphasis on the growth of GDP, and not enough on the permanence of growth or on whether growth contributed to better living standards.

Some analysis shows that the World Bank has increased poverty and been detrimental to the environment, public health and cultural diversity. Some critics also claim that the World Bank has consistently pushed a neoliberal agenda, imposing policies on developing countries which have been damaging, destructive and anti-developmental.

It has also been suggested that the World Bank is an instrument for the promotion of US or Western interests in certain regions of the world. South American nations have even established the Bank of the South in order to reduce US influence in the region. One criticism of the bank is that the President is always a citizen of the United States, nominated by the President of the United States (though subject to the "approval" of the other member countries). There have been accusations that the decision-making structure is undemocratic as the US has a veto on some constitutional decisions with just over 16% of the shares in the bank; Decisions can only be passed with votes from countries whose shares total more than 85% of the bank's shares. A further criticism concerns internal management and the manner in which the World Bank is said to lack accountability.

Criticism of the World Bank often takes the form of protesting as seen in recent events such as the World Bank Oslo 2002 Protests, the October Rebellion, and the Battle of Seattle. Such demonstrations have occurred all over the world, even amongst the Brazilian Kayapo people.

In 2008, a World Bank report which found that biofuels had driven food prices up 75% was not published. Officials confided that they believed it was suppressed to avoid embarrassing the then-President of the United States, George W. Bush.

Knowledge production

The World Bank has been criticized for the manner in which it engages in "the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning" of knowledge. The Bank's production of knowledge has become integral to the funding and justification of large capital projects. The Bank relies on "a growing network of translocal scientists, technocrats, NGOs, and empowered citizens to help generate data and construct discursive strategies". Its capacity to produce authoritative knowledge is a response to intense scrutiny of Bank projects resulting from the successes of growing anti-Bank and alternative-development movements. "Development has relied exclusively on one knowledge system, namely, the modern Western one. The dominance of this knowledge system has dictated the marginalization and disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems". It has been remarked that in these alternative knowledge systems, researchers and activists might find alternative rationales to guide interventionist action away from Western (Bank-produced) ways of thinking. Knowledge production has become an asset to the Bank, and "it is generated and used in highly strategic ways" to provide justifications for development.

Structural adjustment

The effect of structural adjustment policies on poor countries has been one of the most significant criticisms of the World Bank. The 1979 energy crisis plunged many countries into economic crises. The World Bank responded with structural adjustment loans which distributed aid to struggling countries while enforcing policy changes in order to reduce inflation and fiscal imbalance. Some of these policies included encouraging production, investment and labour-intensive manufacturing, changing real exchange rates and altering the distribution of government resources. Structural adjustment policies were most effective in countries with an institutional framework that allowed these policies to be implemented easily. For some countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, economic growth regressed and inflation worsened. The alleviation of poverty was not a goal of structural adjustment loans, and the circumstances of the poor often worsened, due to a reduction in social spending and an increase in the price of food, as subsidies were lifted.

By the late 1980s, international organizations began to admit that structural adjustment policies were worsening life for the world's poor. The World Bank changed structural adjustment loans, allowing for social spending to be maintained, and encouraging a slower change to policies such as transfer of subsidies and price rises. In 1999, the World Bank and the IMF introduced the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper approach to replace structural adjustment loans. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper approach has been interpreted as an extension of structural adjustment policies as it continues to reinforce and legitimize global inequities. Neither approach has addressed the inherent flaws within the global economy that contribute to economic and social inequities within developing countries. By reinforcing the relationship between lending and client states, many believe that the World Bank has usurped indebted countries' power to determine their own economic policy.

Water privatization

Sociologist Michael Goldman has argued that "Industry analysts predict that private water will soon be a capitalized market as precious, and as war-provoking, as oil". Goldman says "These days, an indebted country cannot borrow capital from the World Bank or IMF without a domestic water privatization policy as a precondition". The Bank is utilizing "the 'Washington Consensus' model of "development" to promote water privatization. Following this model, the World Bank is forcing many countries to commodify their water resources, rather than using their expertise in the public sector to acknowledge water as a universal human right and an essential public service". The push for water privatization development plays upon "the shocking tragedy that much of the world lacks affordable clean water". This image creates "new opportunities in development, though it may have little to do with ultimately quenching" the needs of impoverished countries. "The problem of water scarcity for the world's poor has been analyzed by the World Bank as one in which the public sector has failed to deliver, and has therefore prevented development from "taking off", and the economy from modernizing. If the state cannot deliver something as basic as water and sanitation, the argument goes, it is a strong indication of a general failure of public-sector capacity". However, "with the sale or lease of a public good comes more than simply a privatized service; alongside it comes a wide set of postcolonial institutional forces that intervene in state-citizen relations and North-South dynamics". One notable example is the privatization of water forced upon Bolivians by the World Bank which led to multiple protests including the 2000 Cochabamba protests.

Sovereign immunity

Despite claiming goals of "good governance and anti-corruption″ the World Bank requires sovereign immunity from countries it deals with. Sovereign immunity waives a holder from all legal liability for their actions. It is proposed that this immunity from responsibility is a "shield which [The World Bank] wants resort to, for escaping accountability and security by the people." As the United States has veto power, it can prevent the World Bank from taking action against its interests.

Environmental strategy

The World Bank's ongoing work to develop a strategy on climate change and environmental threats has been criticized for (i) lacking of a proper overall vision and purpose, (ii) having a limited focus on its own role in global and regional governance, and (iii) having limited recognition of specific regional issues, e.g. issues of rights to food and land, and sustainable land use. Critics have also commented that only 1% of the World Bank's lending goes to the environmental sector, narrowly defined.

Environmentalists are urging the Bank to stop worldwide support for the development of coal plants and other large emitters of greenhouse gas and operations that are proven to pollute or damage the environment. For instance, protesters in South Africa and abroad have criticized the 2010 decision of the World Bank's approval for a $3.75 billion loan to build the world's 4th largest coal-fired power plant in South Africa. The plant will greatly increase the demand for coal mining and corresponding harmful environmental effects of coal.

References

The Bank Information Center partners with civil society in developing and transition countries to influence the World Bank and other international financial institutions to promote social and economic justice and ecological sustainability.

Notes

External links

Official website

IBRD main page

IDA main page

Access to Information page

Category:Carbon finance Category:Economics organizations Category:Banks Category:Banking institutes Category:United Nations Development Group Category:United Nations specialized agencies

af:Wêreldbank ar:البنك الدولي an:Banco Mundial ast:Bancu Mundial az:Dünya Bankı bm:Dunia Wariso bn:বিশ্ব ব্যাংক zh-min-nan:Sè-kài Gûn-hâng be:Сусветны банк be-x-old:Сусьветны банк bs:Svjetska banka bg:Световна банка ca:Banc Mundial cs:Skupina Světové banky cy:Banc y Byd da:Verdensbanken de:Weltbank et:Maailmapank el:Παγκόσμια Τράπεζα es:Banco Mundial eo:Monda Banko eu:Munduko Bankua fa:بانک جهانی fr:Banque mondiale fur:Bancje Mondiâl gl:Banco Mundial hak:Sṳ-kie Ngiùn-hòng Si̍p-thòn ko:세계은행 hi:विश्व बैंक hr:Svjetska banka id:Bank Dunia is:Alþjóðabankinn it:Banca Mondiale he:הבנק העולמי ka:მსოფლიო ბანკი kk:Бүкіләлемдік банк sw:Benki ya Dunia krc:Дуния банк la:Argentaria Mundana lv:Pasaules Banka lb:Weltbank lt:Pasaulio Bankas hu:Világbank mk:Светска банка ml:ലോക ബാങ്ക് mr:जागतिक बँक arz:مجموعة البنك الدولي ms:Bank Dunia mn:Дэлхийн банк nl:Wereldbank ja:世界銀行 no:Verdensbanken nn:Verdsbanken oc:Banca Mondiala pnb:عالمی بنک pl:Bank Światowy pt:Banco Mundial ro:Banca Mondială qu:Pacha Qullqiwasi ru:Всемирный банк simple:World Bank Group sl:Svetovna banka sr:Светска банка sh:Svjetska banka fi:Maailmanpankki sv:Världsbanken tl:Bangkong Pandaigdig ta:உலக வங்கி te:ప్రపంచబ్యాంకు th:ธนาคารโลก tr:Dünya Bankası uk:Світовий банк ur:عالمی بنک vi:Ngân hàng Thế giới war:Kalibutanon nga Bangko wuu:世界银行 yi:וועלט באנק zh-yue:世界銀行集團 bat-smg:Svieta Banks zh:世界銀行集團

Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
Birthname	Robert Bruce Zoellick
Office	President of the World Bank Group
Nominator	George W. Bush
Term start	July 1, 2007
Predecessor	Paul Wolfowitz
Office2	Deputy Secretary of State of the United States
President2	George W. Bush
Term start2	February 22, 2005
Term end2	July 7, 2006
Predecessor2	Richard Armitage
Successor2	John Negroponte
Office3	Trade Representative of the United States
President3	George W. Bush
Term start3	January 20, 2001
Term end3	February 22, 2005
Predecessor3	Charlene Barshefsky
Successor3	Rob Portman
Office4	Undersecretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs of the United States
President4	George H. W. Bush
Term start4	May 20, 1991
Term end4	August 23, 1992
Predecessor4	Richard McCormack
Successor4	Joan Spero
Office5	Counselor of the Department of State of the United States
President5	George H. W. Bush
Term start5	March 2, 1989
Term end5	August 23, 1992
Predecessor5	Max Kampelman
Successor5	Tim Wirth
Birth date	July 25, 1953
Birth place	Naperville, Illinois, U.S.
Party	Republican Party
Spouse	Sherry Zoellick
Alma mater	Swarthmore CollegeHarvard University
Religion	Lutheranism }}

Robert Bruce Zoellick (; born July 25, 1953) is the eleventh president of the World Bank, a position he has held since July 1, 2007. He was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs, United States Deputy Secretary of State (resigning on July 7, 2006) and U.S. Trade Representative, from February 7, 2001 until February 22, 2005.

President George W. Bush nominated Zoellick on May 30, 2007 to replace Paul Wolfowitz as President of the World Bank. On June 25, 2007, Zoellick was approved by the World Bank's executive board.

Background

Zoellick was born in Naperville, Illinois, the son of Gladys and William T. Zoellick. His family is of German origin and he was raised Lutheran. He graduated in 1971 from Naperville Central High School, graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1975 from Swarthmore College as a history major, and received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1981.

Career

Judicial clerkship (1982–83)

Upon graduation from Harvard Law School Zoellick served as a law clerk for Judge Patricia Wald on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Government service (1985–92)

Zoellick served in various positions at the Department of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988. He held positions including Counselor to Secretary James Baker, Executive Secretary of the Department, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Policy.

During George H. W. Bush's presidency, Zoellick served with Baker, by then Secretary of State, as Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, as well as Counselor to the Department (Under Secretary rank). In August 1992, Zoellick was appointed White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President. Zoellick was also appointed Bush's personal representative for the G7 Economic Summits in 1991 and 1992.

Business, academia, and politics (1993–2001)

After leaving government service, Zoellick served from 1993 to 1997 as an Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae. Afterwards, Zoellick was appointed as the John M. Olin Professor of National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy (1997–98); Research Scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government; and Senior International Advisor to Goldman Sachs.

Zoellick signed the January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton from Project for a New American Century (PNAC) that advocated war against Iraq.

During 1999 Zoellick was, for a short period, the head of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

During 1999, Zoellick served on a panel that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues.

In the 2000 presidential election campaign, Zoellick served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of a group, led by Condoleezza Rice, that called itself The Vulcans. James Baker designated him as his second-in-command—"a sort of chief operating officer or chief of staff"—in the 36-day battle over recounting the vote in Florida.

U.S. Trade Representative (2001–5)

Zoellick was named U.S. Trade Representative at the beginning of the younger Bush's first term; he was a member of the Executive Office, with the rank of Ambassador. According to the U.S. Trade Representative website, Zoellick completed negotiations to bring China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization (WTO); developed a strategy to launch new global trade negotiations at the WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar; shepherded Congressional action on the Jordan Free Trade Agreement and the Vietnam Trade Agreement; and worked with Congress to pass the Trade Act of 2002, which included new Trade Promotion Authority. He also heavily promoted the Central American Free Trade Agreement over the objections of labor, environmental, and human rights groups.

Zoellick played a key role in the U.S.-WTO dispute against the European Union over genetically modified foods. The move sought to require that the European Union comply with international obligations to use science-based methods in continuing its moratorium on the approval of new genetically modified crops within the E.U.

Deputy Secretary of State (2005–6)

On January 7, 2005, Bush nominated Zoellick to be Deputy Secretary of State. Zoellick assumed the office on February 22, 2005. The ''New York Times'' reported on May 25, 2006 that Zoellick could soon announce his departure. Zoellick agreed to serve as Deputy Secretary of State for not less than one year. He was seen as a major architect of the Bush administration’s policies regarding China.

On September 21, 2005, Zoellick created a major stir on both sides of the Pacific by giving a remarkably candid speech to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. In the speech, he not only introduced the notion of China as a "responsible stakeholder" in the international community but sought to allay fears in the US of ceding dominance to China.

In addition, Zoellick chartered a new direction in the Darfur peace process. During a trip to a Darfur refugee camp in 2005, he wore a bracelet with the motto, "Not on our watch." Zoellick was seen by many as the administration's strongest voice on Darfur. His resignation catalyzed groups, such as the Genocide Intervention Network, to praise his record on human rights issues.

President of the World Bank (2007–present)

Zoellick officially took office as President of the World Bank on July 1, 2007. His first term is set to expire in 2012.

In a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington on October 10, 2007, Zoellick formulated what he described as "six strategic themes in support of the goal of an inclusive and sustainable globalization" which he proposed should guide the future work of the World Bank:

(1) Helping to overcome poverty and spur sustainable growth in the poorest countries, especially in Africa;

(2) Addressing the special problems of states coming out of conflict or seeking to avoid the breakdown of the state;

(3) Developing a more differentiated business model for the middle income countries;

(4) Playing a more active role in fostering regional and global public goods that transcend national boundaries and benefit multiple countries and citizens;

(5) Supporting those seeking to advance development and opportunities in the Arab World; and

(6) Collecting and supplying valuable data and serving as a “brain trust” of applied experience to help address the five other strategic themes. In line with this point, on April 20, 2010 Zoellick declared open access to the international statistics compiled by the World Bank.

During his time at the World Bank, Zoellick has greatly expanded the institution's capital stock and raised lending volumes to help member countries deal with the global financial and economic crisis; secured a major increase in resources for the institution's soft loan facility, the International Development Association (IDA), which lends to the poorest countries; and carried out a reform of the World Bank's shareholding, Executive Board and voting structure, to increase the influence of developing and emerging economies in the World Bank's governance.

Other activities

Zoellick has served as a board member for a number of private and public organizations, including Alliance Capital, Said Holdings, and the Precursor Group; as a member of the advisory boards of Enron and Viventures, a venture fund; and a director of the Aspen Institute's Strategy Group.

He has also served on the boards of the German Marshall Fund and the European Institute and on the World Wildlife Fund Advisory Council. He was a member of Secretary William Cohen's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1992, he received the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his eminent achievements in the course of German reunification. In 2002, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Saint Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana.

Views

In 2005 Tom Barry, the policy director of the International Relations Center, wrote that Zoellick "regards free trade philosophy and free trade agreements as instruments of U.S. national interests. When the principles of free trade affect U.S. short-term interests or even the interests of political constituencies, Zoellick is more a mercantilist and unilateralist than free trader or multilateralist."

Gavan McCormack has written that Zoellick used his perch as U.S. trade representative to advocate for Wall Street's policy goals abroad, as during a 2004 intervention in a key privatization issue in Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's re-election campaign. McCormack has written, "The office of the U.S. Trade Representative has played an active part in drafting the Japan Post privatization law. An October 2004 letter from Robert Zoellick to Japan’s Finance Minister Takenaka Heizo, tabled in the Diet on August 2, 2005, included a handwritten note from Zoellick commending Takenaka. Challenged to explain this apparent U.S. government intervention in a domestic matter, Koizumi merely expressed his satisfaction that Takenaka had been befriended by such an important figure… It is hard to overestimate the scale of the opportunity offered to U.S. and global finance capital by the privatization of the Postal Savings System."

In a January 2000 ''Foreign Affairs'' essay entitled "Campaign 2000: A Republican Foreign Policy," he was one of the first of those now associated with Bush's foreign policy to invoke the notion of "evil," writing: "[T]here is still evil in the world—people who hate America and the ideas for which it stands. Today, we face enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them. The United States must remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat its enemies. People driven by enmity or by a need to dominate will not respond to reason or goodwill. They will manipulate civilized rules for uncivilized ends." The same essay praises the "idealism" of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Two years earlier, Zoellick was one of the signatories (who also included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John R. Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Bill Kristol) of a January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton drafted by the Project for the New American Century calling for "removing Saddam [Hussein]'s regime from power."

While in the position of Deputy Secretary of State, Zoellick visited Sudan four times. He supported expanding a United Nations force in the Darfur region to replace African Union soldiers. He was involved in negotiating a peace accord between the government of Sudan and the Sudan Liberation Army, signed in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006.

Zoellick is considered an influential advocate of US-German relations. Fluent in German, he possesses considerable knowledge of Germany, the country of his family background.

In the lead-up to the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit and in the immediate wake of the U.S. elections and subsequent Fed QE2 monetary-policy move, Zoellick published a noted call for the return of some form of gold standard in a post-Bretton Woods II world. The reaction of economists to this suggestion was largely negative, dismissing a renewed gold standard as unrealistic.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former U. S. First Lady and U.S. Senator from New York, with the support of President Barack Obama (thus far without a formal nomination), has been frequently mentioned as a possible successor to President Zoellick when he steps down in mid-2012. Even though she previously had expressed the desire to hold no further political office (specifically ruling out another four years as U.S. Secretary of State in a second Obama term), she has been in formal discussions about taking up the post, according to three different anonymous sources.

See also

The Keynesian Resurgence of 2008 / 2009

References

External links

World Bank biography

State Department biography

Zoellick in Zmag

"China and America: Power and Responsibility" – An address by Zoellick to the Asia Society Annual Dinner in New York, on February 25, 2004

Robert Zoellick's list of federal campaign contributions

Zoellick reports, clippings and sources

Profile of Zoellick in the ''Harvard Law Record''

|- |- |- |-

Category:1953 births Category:American Lutherans Category:American people of German descent Category:Council on Foreign Relations Category:George W. Bush Administration personnel Category:Goldman Sachs people Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:International Republican Institute Category:Investment bankers Category:John F. Kennedy School of Government alumni Category:Knight Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Living people Category:People from Naperville, Illinois Category:Presidents of the World Bank Category:Swarthmore College alumni Category:United States Department of State officials Category:United States Trade Representatives Category:World Bank

ar:روبرت زوليك bg:Робърт Зелик de:Robert Zoellick et:Robert Zoellick es:Robert Zoellick fr:Robert Zoellick ko:로버트 졸릭 hi:रॉबर्ट ज़ोलिक it:Robert Zoellick lt:Robert Zoellick hu:Robert Zoellick nl:Robert Zoellick ja:ロバート・ゼーリック no:Robert Zoellick pl:Robert Zoellick pt:Robert Zoellick ru:Зеллик, Роберт sh:Robert Zoellick fi:Robert Zoellick sv:Robert Zoellick zh:罗伯特·佐利克

Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
name	John Pilger
birth place	Sydney, Australia
residence	United Kingdom
nationality	Australian
occupation	Journalist, writer, documentary filmmaker
website	www.johnpilger.com
footnotes	}}

John Richard Pilger (born 9 October 1939) is a left-wing Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US.

Since his early years as a war correspondent in Vietnam, Pilger has been a strong critic of Western foreign policy. He is particularly opposed to many aspects of United States foreign policy, which he regards as being driven by an imperialist agenda.

Life and career

Pilger was born in Bondi, a suburb of Sydney. He attended Sydney Boys High School, where he started a student newspaper, ''The Messenger''. He began as a copy boy with the ''Sydney Sun'' in 1958 and later moved to the city's ''Daily Telegraph''. In the early 1960s he was recruited by the British ''Daily Mirror''. He has been based in London ever since.

On 5 June 1968 he witnessed the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Pilger says "there's no question that there was another gunman".

During the ''Daily Mirror'' 's campaigning heyday Pilger became its star reporter, particularly on social issues. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra. Later, TV documentaries and books cemented his reputation.

Activities of the military

Vietnam

"The Quiet Mutiny" in 1970 was the first of over 60 documentary films by Pilger. Filmed at Camp Snuffy, the film presented a character study of the common US soldier during the Vietnam War, revealing the shifting morale and open rebellion of Western troops. Pilger described the film as "something of a scoop" - it was the first documentary to show the open rebellion within the drafted ranks of the US military that led to the withdrawal of the land army in 1973. "When I flew to New York and showed it to Mike Wallace, the star reporter of CBS' ''60 Minutes'', he agreed. "Real shame we can't show it here"", Pilger said in an interview with the ''New Statesman''.

Further films about Vietnam followed on from "The Quiet Mutiny" - "Vietnam: Still America's War" (1974), "Do You Remember Vietnam?" (1978) and "Vietnam: The Last Battle" (1995)

Cambodia

In 1979, Pilger and two colleagues with whom he collaborated for many years, film director David Munro and photographer Eric Piper, entered Cambodia in the wake of the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime. The result was a series of world exclusives, the first of which occupied almost the entire ''Daily Mirror'', which sold out. This was followed by an ITV documentary, "Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia", which brought to people's living rooms the suffering of the Khmer people. Some $45 million was raised, unsolicited, in mostly small donations following the showing of Year Zero, including almost £4 million raised by schoolchildren in the UK. This funded the first substantial relief to Cambodia, including life saving drugs like penicillin and the manufacture of clothes to replace the black uniforms people had been forced to wear. Thanks to "Year Zero", said Brian Walker, director of Oxfam, "a solidarity and compassion surged across our nation". Pilger and Munro went on to make another four films on Cambodia. During the filming of Cambodia Year One, they were warned that Pilger was on a Khmer Rouge 'death list' and, in one incident, they narrowly escaped an ambush. The British Film Institute (BFI) has described Year Zero as one of the ten most influential documentary films of the 20th century.

Pilger himself has described the British reaction to 'Year Zero' as follows:

The documentary as a television "event" can send ripples far and wide... 'Year Zero' not only revealed the horror of the Pol Pot years, it showed how Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's "secret" bombing of that country had provided a critical catalyst for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. It also exposed how the west, led by the United States and Britain, was imposing an embargo, like a medieval siege, on the most stricken country on earth. This was a reaction to the fact that Cambodia's liberator was Vietnam - a country that had come from the wrong side of the Cold War and that had recently defeated the US. Cambodia's suffering was a wilful revenge. Britain and the US even backed Pol Pot's demand that his man continue to occupy Cambodia's seat at the UN, while Margaret Thatcher stopped children's milk going to the survivors of his nightmare regime. Little of this was reported. Had 'Year Zero' simply described the monster that Pol Pot was, it would have been quickly forgotten. By reporting the collusion of "our" governments, it told a wider truth about how the world was run. Within two days of 'Year Zero' going to air, 40 sacks of post arrived at ATV (later Central Television) in Birmingham - 26,000 first-class letters in the first post alone. The station quickly amassed £1m, almost all of it in small amounts. "This is for Cambodia," wrote a Bristol bus driver, enclosing his week's wage. Entire pensions were sent, along with entire savings. Petitions arrived at Downing Street, one after the other, for weeks. MPs received hundreds of thousands of letters, demanding that British policy change (which it did, eventually). And none of it was asked for. For me, the public response to 'Year Zero' gave the lie to clichés about "compassion fatigue", an excuse that some broadcasters and television executives use to justify the current descent into the cynicism and passivity of Big Brotherland. Above all, I learned that a documentary could reclaim shared historical and political memories, and present their hidden truths. The reward then was a compassionate and an informed public; and it still is."

In a 2007 speech, 'Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire', Pilger describes his experience with PBS executives who refused to air the film in the USA. In that speech he claims that Year Zero has never been broadcast in the USA.

The Times, 6 July 1991 reported on a libel case stemming out of Pilger's documentary "Cambodia - The Betrayal":

Two men who claimed that a television documentary accused them of being SAS members who trained Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge to lay mines, accepted "very substantial" libel damages in the High Court yesterday. Christopher Geidt and Anthony De Normann settled their action against the journalist John Pilger and Central Television on the third day of the hearing. Desmond Browne, QC, for Mr Pilger and Central Television, said his clients had not intended to allege the two men trained the Khmer Rouge to lay mines, but they accepted that was how the program had been understood.

East Timor

In 1993 Pilger slipped into East Timor and filmed "Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy." The revelations of this film alerted the public to the horror of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, which began in 1975. "Death of a Nation" prompted an international outcry and helped force Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor and eventual independence in 2000. When "Death of a Nation" was screened in Britain it was the highest rating documentary in 15 years and 4000 telephone calls per minute were recorded on the action line set up after the program. When "Death of a Nation" was screened in Australia in June 1994, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans declared that Pilger "had a track record of distorted sensationalism mixed with sanctimony." .

Diego Garcia

Pilger's 2004 film ''Stealing a Nation'' told the story of the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. In the 1960s and 70s, British governments expelled the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago, dumping them in the slums of Mauritius. The aim was to give the principal island of this Crown Colony, Diego Garcia, to the Americans who wanted it as a major military base, from where US planes have since bombed Afghanistan and Iraq. The International Criminal Court later described this act as "a crime against humanity". Pilger strongly criticised Tony Blair for not making any real response to the 2000 High Court ruling that the British expulsion of the island's natives to Mauritius in order to make way for a US Air Force base had been illegal.

In March 2005, ''Stealing a Nation'' was awarded Britain's most prestigious documentary prize, the Royal Television Society Award.

In May 2006, the UK High Court ruled in favour of the Chagossians in their battle to prove they were illegally removed by the UK government during the depopulation of Diego Garcia, paving the way for a return to their homeland. The leader of the Chagos Refugee Group, Olivier Bancoult, described it as a "special day, a day to remember". In May 2007, the UK Government's appeal against the 2006 High Court ruling was dismissed and they took the matter to the House of Lords. In October 2008, the House of Lords ruled in favour of the Government, overturning the original High Court ruling.

Political views

Criticism of Australia

Pilger has long been a critic of Australian government policy, particularly of what he regards as its inherent racism and the poor treatment of its indigenous population. Pilger wrote that the legislation that removed common law rights of Aborigines (Wik), "is just one of the disgraces that has given Australia the distinction of being the only developed country whose government has been condemned as racist by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination."

World leaders

In addition to criticizing the policies of former United States President George W. Bush, Pilger has also taken aim at former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he believes to be just as culpable as President Bush for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

On 25 July 2005, Pilger ascribed blame for the 2005 London bombings that took place the same month to Blair, whose decision to follow Bush helped to generate the rage that he maintains precipitated those bombings.

In the same column a year later, Pilger described Blair as a war criminal for supporting Israel's actions during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. He also asserted that Blair gave permission to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 to initiate what would ultimately become Operation Defensive Shield.

Pilger has also criticised United States President Barack Obama, describing him as "a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb Pakistan." and whose theme "was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully." Pilger asserts, "In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government."

Latin America

His 2007 film ''The War on Democracy'' was Pilger's first cinema release and was named Best Documentary at the 2008 One World Media Awards. The film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Using, among other sources, archive footage sourced by Michael Moore's archivist Carl Deal, the film explores the role of US intervention, overt and covert, in toppling a series of governments in the region since the 1950s. This includes, for example, discussing reports of US involvement in the overthrow of the democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende in 1973 and its replacement by the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries. He investigates the School of the Americas in the US state of Georgia, where Pinochet’s torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.

The film also explores the attempted overthrow of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and how the people of Caracas rose up to force his return to power. It looks at the wider rise of populist governments across South America led by figures calling for loosening ties with Washington and a fairer redistribution of the continent's natural wealth. "[The film]" says Pilger, "is about the struggle of people to free themselves from a modern form of slavery". These people, he says, "describe a world not as American presidents like to see it as useful or expendable, they describe the power of courage and humanity among people with next to nothing. They reclaim noble words like democracy, freedom, liberation, justice, and in doing so they are defending the most basic human rights of all of us in a war being waged against all of us".

In May 2007, Pilger co-signed and put forward a letter supporting the refusal of the government of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez to renew the broadcasting licence of Venezuela's largest television network Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), as they openly supported a 2002 coup attempt against the democratically elected government. Pilger and other signatories suggest that if the BBC or ITV used their news broadcasts to publicly support a coup against the British government, they would suffer similar consequences. Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have described the RCTV decision as an effort to stifle freedom of expression.

Blockade of Gaza

In 2010, Pilger endorsed the Canadian Boat to Gaza , part of the Freedom Flotilla 2 which aims to end the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip.

Other Pilger documentaries

Other documentaries have dealt with human rights issues in Burma, Australia, the Israeli-occupied territories, in Iraq as a consequence of UN sanctions and in Afghanistan.

Following broadcast on ITV in the UK, Pilger's 2002 documentary ''Palestine Is Still the Issue'' was criticised in the UK press for allegedly being inaccurate and biased. The UK television regulator, the Independent Television Commission (ITC), ordered an investigation. Based on the results of the investigation, the ITC rejected the complaints made about the film, stating:

The ITC raised with Carlton all the significant areas of inaccuracy critics of the programme alleged and the broadcaster answered them by reference to a range of historical texts. The ITC is not a tribunal of fact and is particularly aware of the difficulties of verifying 'historical fact' but the comprehensiveness and authority of Carlton's sources were persuasive, not least because many appeared to be of Israeli origin.

Pilger's documentary, the ITC added, "was not in breach of the ITC Programme Code... Adequate opportunity was given to a pro-Israeli government perspective."

The Media

Mainstream journalism

Pilger has a bi-weekly column in ''New Statesman'', which is his most frequent outlet. He is a strong critic of the institutions and economic forces that structure 'mainstream' journalism. In an address at Columbia University on 14 April 2006, he said:

During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?'

Pilger said, while speaking to journalism students at the University of Lincoln, that mainstream journalism means corporate journalism, and as such represents vested corporate interests over those of the public.

He is particularly scornful of pro-Iraq war commentators on the liberal left, or 'liberal interventionists', such as Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch.

In 2003 he was interviewed by the New Zealand journalist Kim Hill on her television show ''Face to Face With Kim Hill''. The interview became infamous in New Zealand. Pilger, being interviewed via a live-cross, complained that Hill had not researched him before the interview, saying "You waste my time because you have not prepared for this interview, as any journalist does, and I've done many interviews. The one thing is to prepare for them and this interview, frankly, is a disgrace." Hill, who had commenced the interview by proposing that the Iraq war was "a just war", eventually threw Pilger's book at his image on the screen.

Honours and awards

Sydney Peace Prize

Pilger has received human rights and journalism awards, including the Richard Dimbleby Award for factual reporting at the 1990 BAFTA Awards, as well as honorary doctorates. He was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize at a ceremony at the Sydney Opera House in November 2009. The jury’s citation reads as follows: "For work as an author, film-maker and journalist as well as for courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard. For commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form."

Other awards

''Awards include:''

Descriptive Writer of the Year (1966)

Reporter of the Year (1967)

Journalist of the Year (1967)

International Reporter of the Year (1970)

News Reporter of the Year (1974)

Campaigning Journalist of the Year (1977)

Journalist of the Year (1979)

UN Media Peace Prize, Australia (1979 – 80)

UN Media Peace Prize and Gold Medal, Australia (1980 – 81)

TV Times Readers' Award (1979)

United Kingdom Academy Award (1990)

The George Foster Peabody Award, USA (1990)

American Television Academy Award ('Emmy') (1991)

British Academy of Film and Television Arts – The Richard Dimbleby Award (1991)

Reporters Sans Frontiers Award, France (1990)

International de Television Geneve Award (1995)

The Monismanien Prize, Sweden (2001)

The Sophie Prize for Human Rights, Norway (2003)

EMMA Media Personality of the Year (2003)

Royal Television Society – Best British Documentary for ''Stealing a Nation'' (2004)

One World Media Awards - TV Documentary Award for his ITV1 film ''The War on Democracy'', on the role of Washington in Latin American politics. (2008) Sydney Peace Prize, Australia (2009)

''Honorary degrees and academic appointments:''

Hon. D. Litt. (Staffordshire)

D. Phil. (Dublin City)

D. Arts (Oxford Brooks and Kingston)

D. Arts (University of Lincoln)

D. Arts (Rhodes University, South Africa)

Hon. LL.D. (St Andrews)

DUniv (Open University, UK)

Edward Wilson Fellow, Deakin University (Australia)

Visiting Professor, Cornell University, USA

Praise and criticism

Praise

In ''Breaking the Silence: The Television Reporting of John Pilger'', his appraisal of the journalist's documentaries, Anthony Hayward wrote, "For more than a generation, he has been an ever stronger voice for those without a voice and a thorn in the side of authority, the Establishment. His work, particularly his television documentaries, has also made him rare in being a journalist who is universally known, a champion of those for whom he fights and the scourge of politicians and others whose actions he exposes." Noam Chomsky said of Pilger: "John Pilger's work has been a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration." According to Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate and member of the Stop the War Coalition, "John Pilger is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is... I salute him." Martha Gellhorn, the American novelist, journalist and war correspondent, said that "[John Pilger] has taken on the great theme of justice and injustice... He documents and proclaims the official lies that we are told and that most people accept or don't bother to think about. [He] belongs to an old and unending worldwide company, the men and women of conscience. Some are as famous as Tom Paine and William Wilberforce, some as unknown as a tiny group calling itself Grandmothers Against The Bomb.... If they win, it is slowly; but they never entirely lose. To my mind, they are the blessed proof of the dignity of man. John has an assured place among them. I'd say he is a charter member for his generation." John Simpson, the BBC's world affairs editor, has said, "A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed."

Criticism

The writer Christopher Hitchens has said of Pilger: "I remember thinking that his work from Vietnam was very good at the time. I dare say if I went back and read it again I’d probably still admire quite a lot of it. But there is a word that gets overused and can be misused – namely, anti-American – and it has to be used about him. So that for me sort of spoils it... even when I’m inclined to agree." Gerard Henderson, the Australian newspaper columnist (and a former Chief of Staff for John Howard), is one of Pilger's most outspoken critics and has accused him of "engaging in hyperbole against western democracies."

''The Economist's'' Lexington columnist commented on Pilger's account of the Arab uprising:

Next up is the egregious John Pilger, who thinks the Arab revolts show that the West in general and the United States in particular are "fascist":

The revolt in the Arab world is against not merely a resident dictator, but a worldwide economic tyranny, designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and the World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries such as Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with 40 per cent of the population earning less than $2 a day. The people's triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.

I don't know why the formerly serious ''New Statesman'' gives Pilger house room (actually I do: depressingly, they sell a few more copies when he's on the cover). Maybe he hasn't noticed, but what most of the Arab protesters say they want are the very freedoms that they know full well, even if Pilger doesn't, to be available in the West. No doubt he believes they are labouring under some massive mind-control delusion engineered by the CIA.

The English writer Auberon Waugh, writing in ''The Spectator'' in the 1970s in response to an article Pilger had written alleging Thai complicity in child trafficking (whose research was challenged), coined the verb "to pilger", defined as: ''to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion''. The word was included in the Oxford Dictionary of New Words in 1991, but removed from the subsequent edition after Pilger complained and, according to some sources, threatened legal action. Noam Chomsky responded to Waugh's neologism by stating that "pilger" and "pilgerise" were "invented by journalists furious about his incisive and courageous reporting, and knowing that the only response they are capable of is ridicule."

Chronology

1958–62: Reporter, freelance writer, sports writer and sub-editor - ''Daily & Sunday Telegraph'', Sydney

1962: Freelance correspondent - Italy 1962

1962–63: Middle East desk, Reuters, London

1963–86: Reporter, sub-editor, feature writer and Chief Foreign Correspondent - ''Daily Mirror''

1969–71: Reporter, ''World in Action'', Granada Television

1974–81: Reporter/Producer, ATV

1987: A founder of ''News on Sunday'', London, and titular Editor-in-Chief but resigned before publication

1981 to present: Documentary film-maker, Central, Carlton Television and ITV

Bibliography

Books

''The Last Day'' (1975)

''Aftermath: The Struggles of Cambodia and Vietnam'' (1981)

''The Outsiders'' (1984)

''Heroes'' (1986)

''A Secret Country'' (1989)

''Distant Voices'' (1992 and 1994)

''Hidden Agendas'' (1998)

''Reporting the World: John Pilger's Great Eyewitness Photographers'' (2001)

''The New Rulers of the World'' (2002)

''Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs'' (ed.) Cape (2004)

''Freedom Next Time'' (2006)

Plays

''The Last Day'' (1983)

Selected documentaries

''Vietnam-The Quiet Mutiny'' 1971

''An Unfashionable Tragedy'' 1975

''Nobody's Children'' 1975

''Zap-The Weapon is Food'' 1976

''Do You Remember Vietnam'' 1978

''Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia'' 1979

''The Mexicans'' 1980

''Heroes'' 1980

''Burp! Pepsi V Coke in the Ice Cold War'' 1984

''In Search Of Truth In Wartime'' 1982

''Nicaragua. A Nations Right to Survive'' 1983

''The Truth Game'' 1983

''The Secret Country-The First Australians Fight Back'' 1985

''Japan Behind the Mask'' 1987

''Cambodia: The Betrayal'' 1990

''War By Other Means'' 1992

''Cambodia: Return to Year Zero'' 1993

''Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy'' (1994)

''Flying the Flag, Arming the World'' 1994

''Vietnam: the Last Battle'' (1995)

''Inside Burma: Land of Fear'' (1996)

''Breaking the Mirror - The Murdoch Effect'' (1997)

''Apartheid Did Not Die'' (1998)

''Welcome to Australia'' (1999)

''Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq'' (2000)

''The New Rulers of the World'' (2001)

''Palestine Is Still the Issue'' (2002)

''Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror'' (2003)

''Stealing a Nation'' (2004)

''The War on Democracy'' (2007)

''The War You Don't See'' (2010)

References

See also

Media Lens

External links

John Pilger - official website

John Pilger at IMDb

''Freedom Next Time: Filmmaker & Journalist John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire'', Democracy Now!, 7 August 2007. Listen and Watch.

John Pilger at Random House Australia

John Pilger: There Is a War on Journalism - video interview by ''Democracy Now!''

John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism - video report by ''Democracy Now!''

Category:1939 births Category:Australian documentary filmmakers Category:Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:Australian freelance journalists Category:Australian journalists Category:Investigative journalists Category:Living people Category:People from Sydney Category:People educated at Sydney Boys High School Category:War correspondents

bn:জন পিলজার cs:John Pilger cy:John Pilger de:John Pilger es:John Pilger fr:John Pilger it:John Pilger nl:John Pilger no:John Pilger pt:John Pilger ru:Пилджер, Джон fi:John Pilger sv:John Pilger

Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
!honorific-prefix	The Honorable
Name	Joseph Stiglitz
Honorific-suffix	ForMemRS FBA
Order	17th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors
Term start	1995
Term end	1997
President	Bill Clinton
Predecessor	Laura Tyson
Successor	Janet Yellen
Office2	World Bank Chief Economist
Term start2	1997
Term end2	2000
Preceded2	Michael Bruno
Succeeded2	Nicholas Stern
Birth date	February 09, 1943
Birth place	Gary, Indiana
Party	Democratic
Spouse	Anya Schiffrin
Alma mater	Amherst CollegeMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Profession	Economist }}

{{infobox economist | school tradition	New Keynesian economics | color darkorange | field Macroeconomics, Public Economics, Information Economics | influences John Maynard Keynes, Robert Solow | opposed | influenced Paul Krugman, Jason Furman | contributions Screening, Taxation, Unemployment | repec_prefixe |repec_idpst33 }}

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, ForMemRS, FBA, (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist 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 also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has been a University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is also an honorary professor at Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management and a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI. Stiglitz is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world.

Biography

Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana, to Jewish parents, Charlotte and Nathaniel Stiglitz. From 1960 to 1963, he studied at Amherst College, where he was a highly active member of the debate team and President of the Student Government. He went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his fourth year as an undergraduate, where he later pursued graduate work. His undergraduate degree was awarded from Amherst College. From 1965 to 1966, he moved to the University of Chicago to do research under Hirofumi Uzawa who had received an NSF grant. He studied for his PhD from MIT from 1966 to 1967, during which time he also held an MIT assistant professorship. The particular style of MIT economics suited him well - simple and concrete models, directed at answering important and relevant questions. From 1966 to 1970 he was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge: he arrived at Fitzwilliam House as a Fulbright Scholar in 1965 and then won a Tapp Junior Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College. In subsequent years, he held academic positions at Yale (1970–1974), Stanford (1974–1976, 1988–2001), Oxford (1976–1979), and Princeton (1979–1988). Stiglitz is now a Professor at Columbia University, with appointments at the Business School, the Department of Economics and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and is editor of ''The Economists' Voice'' journal with J. Bradford DeLong and Aaron Edlin. He also gives classes for a double-degree program between Sciences Po Paris and Ecole Polytechnique in 'Economics and Public Policy'. As of 2005 he chairs The Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. Stiglitz is a New-Keynesian economist.

In addition to making numerous influential contributions to microeconomics, Stiglitz has played a number of policy roles. He served in the Clinton Administration as the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1995 – 1997). At the World Bank, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist (1997 – 2000), in the time when unprecedented protest against international economic organizations started, most prominently with the Seattle WTO meeting of 1999. He was fired by the World Bank for expressing dissent with its policies. He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He is a member of Collegium International, an organization of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just and an economically sustainable world. He is also a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, a Spanish think tank.

Stiglitz has advised American President Barack Obama, but has also been sharply critical of the Obama Administration's financial-industry rescue plan. Stiglitz said that whoever designed the Obama administration's bank rescue plan is "either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent."

In October 2008 he was asked by the President of UN's General Assembly to chair a commission entrusted with drafting a report on the reasons for and solutions to the financial crisis. In response, the commission produced the Stiglitz Report.

On July 25, 2011, Stiglitz participated to the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid (Spain) expressing his support to the 2011 Spanish protests.

Contributions to economics

Information asymmetry

Stiglitz's most famous research was on screening, a technique used by one economic agent to extract otherwise private information from another. It was for this contribution to the theory of information asymmetry that he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2001 "for laying the foundations for the theory of markets with asymmetric information" with George A. Akerlof and A. Michael Spence.

Before the advent of models of imperfect and asymmetric information, the traditional neoclassical economics literature had assumed that markets are efficient except for some limited and well defined market failures. More recent work by Stiglitz and others reversed that presumption, to assert that it is only under exceptional circumstances that markets are efficient. Stiglitz has shown (together with Bruce Greenwald) that "whenever markets are incomplete and/or information is imperfect (which are true in virtually all economies), even competitive market allocation is not constrained Pareto efficient". In other words, they addressed "the problem of determining when tax interventions are Pareto-improving. The approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained Pareto optima." Although these conclusions and the pervasiveness of market failures do not necessarily warrant the state intervening broadly in the economy, it makes clear that the "optimal" range of government recommendable interventions is definitely much larger than the traditional "market failure" school recognizes. For Stiglitz, there is no such thing as an invisible hand. According to Stiglitz:

In the opening remarks for his prize acceptance "Aula Magna", Stiglitz said:

In an interview in 2007, Stiglitz explained further:

Efficiency wages: the Shapiro-Stiglitz model

Stiglitz also did research on efficiency wages, and helped create what became known as the ''"Shapiro-Stiglitz model"'' to explain why there is unemployment even in equilibrium, why wages are not bid down sufficiently by job seekers (in the absence of minimum wages) so that everyone who wants a job finds one, and to question whether the neoclassical paradigm could explain involuntary unemployment. The answer to these puzzles was proposed by Shapiro and Stiglitz in 1984: "Unemployment is driven by the information structure of employment". Two basic observations undergird their analysis:

# Unlike other forms of capital, humans can choose their level of effort. # It is costly for firms to determine how much effort workers are exerting.

A full description of this model can be found at the links provided. Some key implications of this model are:

# Wages do not fall enough during recessions to prevent unemployment from rising. If the demand for labour falls, this lowers wages. But because wages have fallen, the probability of 'shirking' (workers not exerting effort) has risen. If employment levels are to be maintained, through a sufficient lowering of wages, workers will be less productive than before through the shirking effect. As a consequence, in the model wages do not fall enough to maintain employment levels at the previous state, because firms want to avoid excessive shirking by their workers. So, unemployment must rise during recessions, because wages are kept 'too high'. # Possible corollary: Wage sluggishness. Moving from one private cost of hiring to another private cost of hiring will require each firm to repeatedly re-optimize wages in response to shifting unemployment rate. Firms cannot cut wages until unemployment rises sufficiently (a coordination problem).

The outcome is never Pareto efficient.

# Each firm employs too few workers because it faces private cost of hiring rather than the social cost — which is equal to and in all cases. This means that firms do not "internalize" the "external" cost of unemployment - they do not factor how large-scale unemployment harms society when assessing their own costs. This leads to a negative externality as marginal social cost exceeds the firm's marginal cost (MSC = Firm's Private Marginal Cost + Marginal External Cost of increased social unemployment) # There are also negative externalities. Each firm increases the asset value of unemployment for all other firms by hiring. But the first problem clearly dominates since the 'natural rate of unemployment' is always too high.

Some possible practical implications of Stiglitz theorems

While the mathematical validity of Stiglitz ''et al.'' theorems are not in question, their practical implications in political economy and their application in real life economic policies have been subject to considerable disagreement and debate. Stiglitz himself seems to be continuously adapting his own political-economic discourse, as we can see from the evolution in his positions as initially stated in ''Whither Socialism?'' (1994) to his own new positions held on his most recent publications.

::Once incomplete and imperfect information are introduced, Chicago-school defenders of the market system cannot sustain descriptive claims of the Pareto efficiency of the real world. Thus, Stiglitz's use of rational-expectations equilibrium assumptions to achieve a more realistic understanding of capitalism than is usual among rational-expectations theorists leads, paradoxically, to the conclusion that capitalism deviates from the model in a way that justifies state action—socialism—as a remedy.

::The effect of Stiglitz's influence is to make economics even more presumptively interventionist than Samuelson preferred. Samuelson treated market failure as the exception to the general rule of efficient markets. But the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem posits market failure as the norm, establishing "that government could potentially almost always improve upon the market's resource allocation." And the Sappington-Stiglitz theorem "establishes that an ideal government could do better running an enterprise itself than it could through privatization" (Stiglitz 1994, 179).

The objections to the wide adoption of these positions suggested by Stiglitz's discoveries do not come from economics itself but mostly from political scientists and are in the fields of sociology. As David L. Prychitko discusses in his "critique" to ''Whither Socialism?'' (see below), although Stiglitz's main economic insight seems generally correct, it still leaves open great constitutional questions such as how the coercive institutions of the government should be constrained and what the relation is between the government and civil society.

Politics

Clinton administration, 1993 - 1997

Stiglitz joined the Clinton Administration in 1993, serving first as a member during 1993-1995, and then as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during 1995-1997, in which capacity he also served as a member of the cabinet. He became deeply involved in environmental issues, which included serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and helping draft a new law for toxic wastes (which was never passed).

Stiglitz's most important contribution in this period was helping define a new economic philosophy, a "third way", which postulated the important, but limited, role of government, that unfettered markets often did not work well, but that government was not always able to correct the limitations of markets. The academic research that he had been conducting over the preceding 25 years provided the intellectual foundations for this "third way".

When President Bill Clinton was re-elected, he asked Stiglitz to continue to serve as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for another term. But he had already been approached by the World Bank, to be its senior vice president for development policy and its chief economist.

As the World Bank began its ten-year review of the transition of the former Communist countries to the market economy it unveiled failures of the countries that had followed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shock therapy policies - both in terms of the declines in GDP and increases in poverty - that were even worse than the worst that most of its critics had envisioned at the onset of the transition. Clear links existed between the dismal performances and the policies that the IMF had advocated, such as the voucher privatization schemes and excessive monetary stringency. Meanwhile, the success of a few countries that had followed quite different strategies suggested that there were alternatives that could have been followed. The U.S. Treasury had put enormous pressure on the World Bank to silence his criticisms of the policies which they and the IMF had pursued.

Stiglitz always had a poor relationship with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. In 2000, Summers successfully petitioned for Stiglitz's removal, supposedly in exchange for World Bank President James Wolfensohn's re-appointment – an exchange that Wolfensohn denies took place. Whether Summers ever made such a blunt demand is questionable – Wolfensohn claims he would "have told him to fuck himself".

Stiglitz resigned from the World Bank in January 2000, a month before his term expired. The Bank's president, James Wolfensohn, announced Stiglitz's resignation in November 1999 and also announced that Stiglitz would stay on as ''"special advisor to the president"'', and would chair the search committee for a successor.

:"Joseph E. Stiglitz said today [Nov. 24, 1999] that he would resign as the World Bank's chief economist after using the position for nearly three years to raise pointed questions about the effectiveness of conventional approaches to helping poor countries."

In this role, he continued criticism of the IMF, and, by implication, the US Treasury Department. In April 2000, in an article for ''The New Republic'', he wrote:

:"''They’ll say the IMF is arrogant. They’ll say the IMF doesn’t really listen to the developing countries it is supposed to help. They’ll say the IMF is secretive and insulated from democratic accountability. They’ll say the IMF’s economic ‘remedies’ often make things worse – turning slowdowns into recessions and recessions into depressions. And they’ll have a point. I was chief economist at the World Bank from 1996 until last November, during the gravest global economic crisis in a half-century. I saw how the IMF, in tandem with the U.S. Treasury Department, responded. And I was appalled''."

The article was published a week before the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF and provoked a strong response. It proved too strong for Summers and, yet more lethally, Stiglitz's protector-of-sorts at the World Bank, Wolfensohn. Wolfensohn had privately empathised with Stiglitz's views, but this time was worried for his second term, which Summers had threatened to veto. Stanley Fisher, deputy managing director of the IMF, called a special staff meeting and informed at that gathering that Wolfensohn had agreed to fire Stiglitz. Meanwhile, the Bank's External Affairs department told the press that Stiglitz had not been fired, his post had merely been abolished.

In a September 19, 2008 radio interview with Aimee Allison and Philip Maldari on Pacifica Radio's KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, California, Stiglitz implied that President Clinton and his economic advisors would not have backed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had they been aware of stealth provisions, inserted by lobbyists, that they overlooked.

Initiative for Policy Dialogue

In July 2000 Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), with support of the Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur, and Mott Foundations and the Canadian and Swedish governments, to enhance democratic processes for decision-making in developing countries and to ensure that a broader range of alternatives are on the table and more stakeholders are at the table.

Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System

In 2009, Stiglitz chaired the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, informally known as the Stiglitz Commission, which was convened by the President of the United Nations General Assembly "to review the workings of the global financial system, including major bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF, and to suggest steps to be taken by Member States to secure a more sustainable and just global economic order".

Support to the 2011 Spanish Protests

On July 25, 2011, Stiglitz participated to the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid (Spain) expressing his support to the 2011 Spanish protests. During an informal speech, he made a brief review of some of the problems in Europe and in the United States, the serious unemployment rate and the situation in Greece. "This is an opportunity for economic contribution social measures," argued Stiglitz, who made a critical speech about the way authorities are handling the political exit to the crisis. He encouraged those present to respond to the "bad ideas", not with indifference, but with "good ideas". "This does not work, you have to change it," he said.

Books

Along with his technical economic publications (he has published over 300 technical articles), Stiglitz is the author of books on issues from patent law to abuses in international trade.

''Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy'' (2010)

In ''Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy'', Stiglitz discusses the causes of the 2008 recession/depression and goes on to propose reforms needed to avoid a repetition of a similar crisis, advocating government intervention and regulation in a number of areas. Among the policy-makers he criticises are George W. Bush, Larry Summers, and Barack Obama.

This book does not require an economics background in order to be of value to the reader. Rather it explains Stiglitz's views on the recent economic crisis in terms which make it relevant to the average homeowner, retirement investor, and voter in the United States. He explains how without fundamental changes in economic policy and regulation the position of the US in the world political and economic arena may deteriorate significantly.

''The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict'' (2008)

''The Three Trillion Dollar War'' examines the full cost of the Iraq War, including many hidden costs. The book also discusses the extent to which these costs will be imposed for many years to come, paying special attention to the enormous expenditures that will be required to care for very large numbers of wounded veterans. Stiglitz was openly critical of George W. Bush at the time the book was released.

''Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development'' (2006)

In ''Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development'', Stiglitz, José Antonio Ocampo (United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, until 2007), Shari Spiegel (Managing Director, Initiative for Policy Dialogue - IPD), Ricardo Ffrench-Davis (Main Adviser, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean - ECLAC) and Deepak Nayyar (Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi) discuss the current debates on macroeconomics, capital market liberalization and development, and develop a new framework within which one can assess alternative policies. They explain their belief that the Washington Consensus has advocated narrow goals for development (with a focus on price stability) and prescribed too few policy instruments (emphasizing monetary and fiscal policies), and places unwarranted faith in the role of markets. The new framework focuses on real stability and long-term sustainable and equitable growth, offers a variety of non-standard ways to stabilize the economy and promote growth, and accepts that market imperfections necessitate government interventions. Policy-makers have pursued stabilization goals with little concern for growth consequences, while trying to increase growth through structural reforms focused on improving economic efficiency. Moreover, structural policies, such as capital market liberalization, have had major consequences for economic stability. This book challenges these policies by arguing that stabilization policy has important consequences for long-term growth and has often been implemented with adverse consequences. The first part of the book introduces the key questions and looks at the objectives of economic policy from different perspectives. The third part presents a similar analysis for capital market liberalization.

''Making Globalization Work'' (2006)

''Making Globalization Work'' surveys the inequities of the global economy, and the mechanisms by which developed countries exert an excessive influence over developing nations. Dr. Stiglitz argues that through tariffs, subsidies, an over-complex patent system and pollution, the world is being both economically and politically destabilised. Stiglitz argues that strong, transparent institutions are needed to address these problems. He shows how an examination of incomplete markets can make corrective government policies desirable.

Stiglitz is an exception to the general pro-globalization view of professional economists, according to economist Martin Wolf. Stiglitz argues that economic opportunities are not widely enough available, that financial crises are too costly and too frequent, and that the rich countries have done too little to address these problems. ''Making Globalization Work'' had sold more than two million copies.

''Fair Trade for All'' (2005)

''New Paradigm for Monetary Economics'' (2004)

''The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade'' (2003)

''The Roaring Nineties"'' is Stiglitz' analysis of the boom and bust of the 1990s. Presented from an insider's point of view, firstly as chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, and later as chief economist of the World Bank, it continues his argument on how misplaced faith in free-market ideology led to the global economic issues of today, with a perceptive focus on US policies.

''Globalization and Its Discontents'' (2002)

In ''Globalization and Its Discontents'', Stiglitz argues that what are often called "developing economies" are, in fact, not developing at all, and puts much of the blame on the IMF.

Stiglitz bases his argument on the themes that his decades of theoretical work have emphasized: namely, what happens when people lack the key information that bears on the decisions they have to make, or when markets for important kinds of transactions are inadequate or don't exist, or when other institutions that standard economic thinking takes for granted are absent or flawed. Stiglitz stresses the point: "Recent advances in economic theory" (in part referring to his own work) "have shown that whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always, and especially in developing countries, then the invisible hand works most imperfectly." As a result, Stiglitz continues, governments can improve the outcome by well-chosen interventions. Stiglitz argues that when families and firms seek to buy too little compared to what the economy can produce, governments can fight recessions and depressions by using expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to spur the demand for goods and services. At the microeconomic level, governments can regulate banks and other financial institutions to keep them sound. They can also use tax policy to steer investment into more productive industries and trade policies to allow new industries to mature to the point at which they can survive foreign competition. And governments can use a variety of devices, ranging from job creation to manpower training to welfare assistance, to put unemployed labor back to work and cushion human hardship.

Stiglitz complains bitterly that the IMF has done great damage through the economic policies it has prescribed that countries must follow in order to qualify for IMF loans, or for loans from banks and other private-sector lenders that look to the IMF to indicate whether a borrower is creditworthy. The organization and its officials, he argues, have ignored the implications of incomplete information, inadequate markets, and unworkable institutions—all of which are especially characteristic of newly developing countries. As a result, Stiglitz argues, the IMF has often called for policies that conform to textbook economics but do not make sense for the countries to which the IMF is recommending them. Stiglitz seeks to show that these policies have been disastrous for the countries that have followed them.

''Whither Socialism?''

''Whither Socialism?'' is based on Stiglitz's Wicksell Lectures, presented at the Stockholm School of Economics in 1990 and presents a summary of information economics and the theory of markets with imperfect information and imperfect competition, as well as being a critique of both free market and market socialist approaches (see Roemer critique, op. cit.). Stiglitz explains how the neoclassical, or Walrasian model (''"Walrasian economics"'' refers to the result of the process which has given birth to a formal representation of Adam Smith's notion of the "invisible hand", along the lines put forward by Leon Walras and encapsulated in the general equilibrium model of Arrow-Debreu), may have wrongly encouraged the belief that market socialism could work. Stiglitz proposes an alternative model, based on the information economics established by the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorems.

One of the reasons Stiglitz sees for the critical failing in the standard neoclassical model, on which market socialism was built, is its failure to consider the problems that arise from lack of perfect information and from the costs of acquiring information. He also identifies problems arising from its assumptions concerning completeness.

Papers and conferences

Stiglitz wrote a series of papers and held a series of conferences explaining how such information uncertainties may have influence on everything from unemployment to lending shortages. As the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration and former chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz was able to put some of his views into action. For example, he was an outspoken critic of quickly opening up financial markets in developing countries. These markets rely on access to good financial data and sound bankruptcy laws, but he argued that many of these countries didn't have the regulatory institutions needed to ensure that the markets would operate soundly.

He co-authored a paper titled "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-Based Capital Standard" with Peter Orszag in 2002 in which they concluded "on the basis of historical experience, the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero."

Private life

Stiglitz married for the third time on October 28, 2004, to Anya Schiffrin, who works at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Publications

; Books:

2010, ''Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy'' ISBN 978-0393075960, W. W. Norton.

2010, ''Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis'' ISBN 978-0-19-957880-1, edited with Stephany Griffith-Jones and José Antonio Ocampo, Oxford University Press, 2010

2008, ''The Three Trillion Dollar War'' ISBN 978-0-39-306701-9; by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, W. W. Norton.

2006, ''Making Globalization Work'' ISBN 0-393-06122-1, Penguin Books, August 2006.

2006, ''Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization, and Development'' ISBN 0-19-928814-3 (Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series C); by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jose Antonio Ocampo, Shari Spiegel, Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, and Deepak Nayyar; Oxford University Press 2006

1996, ''Whither Socialism ?'' Stiglitz, Joseph E., (Wicksell Lectures), MIT Press, January 1996.

2000, ''Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective'', edited with Gerald M. Meier, World Bank, May 2000.

2001, ''Rethinking the East Asian Miracle'', edited with Shahid Yusuf, World Bank and Oxford University Press.

2002, ''Principles of Macroeconomics'', third edition, with Carl E. Walsh, W.W. Norton & Company, March 2002.

2002, ''Economics'', Third Edition, with Carl E. Walsh, W.W. Norton & Company, April 2002.

2002, ''Peasants Versus City-Dwellers: Taxation and the Burden of Economic Development'', with Raaj K. Sah, Oxford University Press, April 2002.

2002, ''Globalization and Its Discontents'', W.W. Norton & Company, June 2002.

2003,''Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics'', with Bruce Greenwald, Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Description and chapter-preview links.

2003, ''The Roaring Nineties'', W.W. Norton & Company, forthcoming in October 2003.

''Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development'' (Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series C)– by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Andrew Charlton; Hardcover

2000, 3rd ed. ''Economics of the Public Sector.''

2002, ''The Rebel Within: Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank'' by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Editor), Ha-Joon Chang (Editor), ISBN 1-898855-91-9, Anthem Press, Wimbledon Publishing Company (Paperback - February 25, 2002)

2005, ''The Development Round Of Trade Negotiations In The Aftermath Of Cancun'' by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Andrew Charlton (Paperback - January 30, 2005)

2005, ''A Chance For The World Bank'' by Joseph P Stiglitz (Foreword), Jozef Ritzen, ISBN 1-84331-162-3, Anthem Press, Wimbledon Publishing Company (Paperback - May 30, 2005)

1986, 'Economics of the Public Sector' by J.E.Stiglitz ISBN 0-393-96651-8, W.W.Norton, New York. (Re-printed 1988, 2000)

1981, 'Theory of Commodity Price Stabilization' by David M.G. Newbery and Joseph E. Stiglitz ISBN 0198284179 ISBN 978-0198284178, Oxford University Press [Hardcover: 512 pages]

''Readings in the Modern Theory of Economic Growth'' by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Editor), Hirofumi Uzawa (Editor)

; Book chapters:

2009. "Regulation and Failure," in David Moss and John Cisternino (eds.), ''New Perspectives on Regulation'', ch. 1, pp. 11-23. Cambridge: The Tobin Project.

2001, New Ideas About Old Age Security: Toward Sustainable Pension Systems in the 21st Century , edited with Robert Holzmann, World Bank, January 2001.

; Selected scholarly articles

2007, "Prizes, Not Patents" post-autistic economics review, issue no. 42

1998, Distinguished lecture on economics in government: The private uses of public interests: Incentives and institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12, 3–22.

1998, ''Redefining the Role of the State - What should it do ? How should it do it ? And how should these decisions be made?'' Paper presented at the Tenth Anniversary of MITI Research Institute, Tokyo, March 1998.

1996, The World Bank Research Observer: No 2: August 1996 by Joseph Stiglitz

1993, “Post Walrasian and post Marxian economics,” ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'', vol. 7, pp. 109–14

1993, “Market socialism and neoclassical economics,” in Bardhan, P. K. and Roemer, J. E. (eds.), ''Market Socialism. The Current Debate'', New York: Oxford University Press

1989, “Principal and agent,” in J. Eatwell, M. Milgate and P. Newman (eds.), ''The New Palgrave. Allocation, Information and Markets''. New York: W. W. Norton

1987, “The causes and consequences of the dependence of quality on prices”, ''Journal of Economic Literature'', vol. 25, pp. 1–48

1981 (with A. Weiss), "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information", ''American Economic Review'', vol. 71, pp. 393–410

1977 (with A.K. Dixit), “Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity”, ''American Economic Review'', vol. 67, pp. 297–308

1976 (with M. Rothschild), “Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information”, ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', vol. 90, pp.  629–650.

1974, “Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping”, ''Review of Economic Studies'', Vol. 41, No. 2, 219-255.

1974, “Alternative Theories of Wage Determination and Unemployment in LDCs: The Labour Turnover Model”, ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', vol. 81, pp. 194–227

1971 (with M. Rothschild), “Increasing Risk: II. Its Economic Consequences”, ''Journal of Economic Theory'', Vol. 3, pp. 66–84

1970 (with M. Rothschild), “Increasing Risk: I. A Definition”, ''Journal of Economic Theory'', Vol. 2, pp. 225–243

; Articles in popular press:

2011, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%", Vanity Fair, May 2011

2010, Review of

2009, "Wall Street’s Toxic Message", Vanity Fair, July 2009

2009, "America's socialism for the rich", The Guardian, June 2009

2009, "Capitalist Fools", Vanity Fair, January 2009

2007, "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush", Vanity Fair, December 2007 Issue

2007, Where is the World Going To, Mr. Stiglitz? directed by Jacques Sarasin, First Run Features.

2002, "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-based Capital Standard", for FannieMae Volume I, Issue 2 March 2002

; Video and online sources:

2010, Freefall: Joseph Stiglitz at the Commonwealth Club

2008, The Three Trillion Dollar War a panel discussion with Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes regarding their new book, `''The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict''.` Feb 28, 2008 at Columbia University.

2007, Where is the World Going To, Mr. Stiglitz? directed by Jacques Sarasin, First Run Features.

World Bank Video presentation

Online access to Stiglitz published papers, at his own website

See also

List of economists

List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

External links

Joseph E. Stiglitz at Columbia University

* Joseph Stiglitz committee chair profile at Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University

Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics 2001 lecture at NobelPrize.org

Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc

Publications at the National Bureau of Economic Research

Column archives at Project Syndicate

Joseph Stiglitz with Matthew Bishop at the 92nd Street Y, January 2010

Interview at The Commonwealth Club, February 2010

Free Markets and the World Economy with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, July 2010

Category:Academics of the University of Oxford Category:American anti-globalization writers Category:American economists Category:American Nobel laureates Category:Amherst College alumni Category:Ashkenazi Jews Category:Clinton Administration personnel Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Development economists Category:Development specialists Category:New Keynesian economists Category:Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Category:Fellows of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:Fellows of the Econometric Society Category:Information economists Category:International development Category:International Panel on Climate Change lead authors Category:Jewish American writers Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:People from Gary, Indiana Category:Princeton University faculty Category:People associated with the University of Manchester Category:Public economists Category:Stanford University faculty Category:United States Council of Economic Advisors Category:World Bank Chief Economists Category:Yale University faculty Category:Keio University faculty Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:Foreign Members of the Royal Society Category:Faculty of Sciences Po Category:Gerald Loeb Award winners

ar:جوزيف ستيجلز bn:জোসেফ স্টিগ্‌লিট্‌স bg:Джоузеф Стиглиц ca:Joseph Eugene Stiglitz cs:Joseph Stiglitz cy:Joseph Stiglitz de:Joseph E. Stiglitz et:Joseph Stiglitz es:Joseph Stiglitz eo:Joseph E. Stiglitz fr:Joseph Eugene Stiglitz gd:Joseph Stiglitz ko:조지프 스티글리츠 io:Joseph E. Stiglitz id:Joseph E. Stiglitz it:Joseph Stiglitz he:ג'וזף שטיגליץ rw:Joseph Stiglitz la:Iosephus E. Stiglitz lt:Joseph Stiglitz mk:Џозеф Стиглиц mr:जोसेफ स्तिगलित्झ nl:Joseph Eugene Stiglitz ja:ジョセフ・E・スティグリッツ no:Joseph E. Stiglitz pnb:جازف سٹگلٹز pl:Joseph E. Stiglitz pt:Joseph Stiglitz ro:Joseph Stiglitz ru:Стиглиц, Джозеф Юджин sl:Joseph Stiglitz fi:Joseph Stiglitz sv:Joseph Stiglitz th:โจเซฟ สติกลิตส์ tr:Joseph E. Stiglitz uk:Джозеф Стігліц vi:Joseph Stiglitz yo:Joseph E. Stiglitz zh:约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨