Joseph Stiglitz: Smith's "Invisible Hand" a Myth? March 8, 2010

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/02/22/Joseph_Stiglitz_Freefall

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz challenges the influential teachings of 18th-century economist Adam Smith, citing flaws with Smith's metaphor of an "invisible hand" guiding the free market. "The reason the invisible hand often seemed invisible was that it wasn't there," he says. Stiglitz claims an uncritical adherence to Smith's ideas is partially to blame for the current financial crisis.

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Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize Winner for Economics and author of Freefall sits down with Andrew Leonard, Senior Technology and Business Writer for Salon.

Stiglitz argues that America exported bad economics, bad policies and bad behavior to the rest of the world. Stiglitz outlines a way forward building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government; addressing the inequalities of the global financial system; and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists. - Commonwealth Club of California

Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank until January 2000. Before that he was the chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. He is currently a finance and economics professor at Columbia University. He is the author of Globalization and Its Discontents and The Roaring Nineties.