The Finance Industry Is Gobbling Up Money That Belongs in Our Pockets

[BlueRaiderFan]

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tiglitz weighs in on how the huge banks have rigged the economy in their direction.
By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now!
October 28, 2015
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Joseph Stiglitz.
Photo Credit: screenshot via Democracy Now!

As presidential candidates spar over economic policies and Congress debates the TPP, one of the nation’s leading economists is calling for a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz has just published a new book called "Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity."

On Saturday, leading Democratic presidential contenders addressed the Iowa Democratic Party gathering known as the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. The high-profile party dinner has been a defining moment on the campaign calendar since ’75. This is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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HILLARY CLINTON: There is something wrong when the top 25 hedge fund managers earn more in a year than all the kindergarten teachers in America combined, or when top CEOs make 300 times what a typical worker does, or when corporate profits soar but employees don’t share in those profits, when it’s easy for a big corporation to get a tax break, but it’s still too hard for a small business to get a loan.

AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton. Well, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also spoke in Iowa over the weekend, calling for a raise in the minimum wage.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: When you see the middle class of this country disappearing, and when you see people you know working two or three jobs trying to cobble together some income and some healthcare, you don’t just shrug your shoulders and say, "That’s the way it is." You fight to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

AMY GOODMAN: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa, which has become the bellwether of Democratic support.

Well, as presidential candidates spar over economic policies, one of the nation’s leading economists is calling for a

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[BlueRaiderFan]

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly. So, you know, take one example. Productivity of American workers has continued to grow pretty steadily. Historically, wages moved with productivity. You know, you do those two charts, they just move right together. Suddenly, around 1980, productivity continues to grow, but wages stagnate. This is really an unusual phenomenon. And that was one of the things that motivated writing the book. We said, "What’s going on?" And we said, what’s happened is, particularly in America, that we began to change the rules, rules of—labor rules, rules about the financial sector, rules about corporate governance, tax rules. You know, it wasn’t inevitable that you tax speculation at a lower rate than you tax people who are working for a living. That’s not inherent in a market economy. Actually, what we say is, this is a distortion of capitalism. This is a distortion of a market economy. And so—