A George Soros-funded economist taught a course to the Occupy Wall Street protesters purportedly to help the activists better understand what caused the global financial crisis.
Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also recently addressed the so-called social protests rocking Spain.
Besides accepting funding from the controversial billionaire, Stiglitz has engaged in numerous projects with Soros and sits on the boards of Soros organizations, including one openly seeking to remake the world’s economy.
Stiglitz is a leading proponent of more government regulation of the economy.
He previously chaired the Commission on Global Financial Issues of Socialists International, the world’s largest socialist organization.
Last year, he gave a lecture titled “A New Economic World Order” in which his presentation called for the world to be “no longer dominated by one ‘superpower.'”
During his teach-in for the Occupy Wall Street protesters last week, Stiglitz declared banks “prey on the poorest Americans.”
“There’s a system where we socialize losses and privatize gains,” he told the anti-Wall Street protesters. “That’s not capitalism, that’s not a market economy, that’s a distorted economy and if we continue with that we won’t succeed in growing, and we won’t succeed in creating a just society.
“One of the things the banks did was to prey on the poorest Americans [through predatory lending],” continued Stiglitz. “We knew about it. There were some people who tried to stop it, but they used their political power, [that is] Wall Street used its political power, to stop those who would stop them.”
Government intervention
Stiglitz has been an economic advisor to President Obama, but he also criticized the president’s bank rescue plan. Stiglitz said whoever designed that plan is “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”
Stiglitz won his Nobel for research on what became the theory of information asymmetry, which argues for more government intervention in failing economies than the traditional “market failure” school had previously recognized.
He has stated that “the real debate today is about finding the right balance between the market and government. Both are needed. They can each complement each other. This balance will differ from time to time and place to place.”
Gavin Wright, chairman of Stanford’s economics department, summarized Stiglitz’s work by stating, “Broadly speaking, Joe’s theoretical work has had to do with the shortcomings and imperfections of market economy, not from the standpoint of a thorough-going rejection of the market economy but from the perspective that holds out hope for improvement through government regulation or use of the tax system.”
Government, business as ‘partners’
Stiglitz was a member of the Bill Clinton administration, serving both in Clinton’s cabinet and as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Stiglitz’s most important contribution during his time in the Clinton administration was helping to define a new economic philosophy called a “third way,” which called for business and government to join hands as “partners,” while recognizing that government intervention could not always correct the limitations of markets.
“Third Way” is an ideology first promoted as an alternative to free markets by Mikhail Gorbachev after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The “Third Way” of governing would be neither capitalist nor communist, but something in between.
In his 1998 State of the Union Address, President Clinton outlined the “Third Way”: “We have moved past the sterile debate between those who say government is the enemy and those who say government is the answer. My fellow Americans, we have found a Third Way.”
The “Third Way” calls for business and government to join hands as “partners.”
Discover the Networks criticized the theory: “In short, Big Business would own the economy (as under capitalism), while Big Government would run it (as under socialism). Corporations would be persuaded to comply with government directives through subsidies, tax breaks, customized legislation, and other special privileges.”
Soros himself has been a vocal proponent of the “Third Way” economic policy.
Stiglitz, meanwhile, also became involved in “global warming” issues, including serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, helping to draft a new law for toxic wastes and serving on the boards of numerous environmental groups, such as the Alliance for Climate Protection.
‘No longer one superpower’
Stiglitz is a prolific speaker. On Sept. 17, 2010, he gave a speech to the Swiss and Global Asset Management group in which his Power Point presentation, available online stated the U.S. is mired in Japanese-style malaise because of “greater inequality” and “weaker social protection.”
Stiglitz said the U.S. was failing to come to “terms with its standing in the New Global Order.”
His presentation called for a “New Global Economic Order” in which the world is “no longer dominated by one ‘superpower,'” although he predicted China’s income per capita will remain much below that of the U.S.
Soros’ economic partner
Stiglitz is deeply tied to Soros, the billionaire whose own connections to the Occupy Wall Street movement have come under scrutiny the past few days.
Stiglitz serves on the international advisory board of Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
The economist is the co-founder and president of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a globalist group which is funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute.
Along with numerous other Open Society Institute leaders, Stiglitz is a member of the Collegium International, a globalist group that proclaims in its official declaration “the Earth, home of humanity, constitutes a whole denoted by interdependence.”
Perhaps most significantly, Stignitz sits on the board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, or INET, an organization literally seeking to reorganize the entire global economic system.
George Soros is INET’s founding sponsor, with the billionaire having provided a reported $25 million over five years to support INET activities.
In April, Stiglitz spoke at INET’s annual meeting, which took place in the mountains of Bretton Woods, N.H.
The gathering was held at Mount Washington Hotel, famous for hosting the original Bretton Woods economic agreements drafted in 1944. The initial conference’s goal was to rebuild a post-World War II international monetary system. The April gathering had a similar stated goal – a global economic restructuring.
A Business Insider report on last year’s event related, “George Soros has brought together a crack team of the world’s top economists and financial thinkers.”
“Its aim,” continued the business newspaper, “to remake the world’s economy as they see fit.”
More than two-thirds of the speakers at this year’s conference had direct ties to Soros.
The keynote speaker at the Bretton Woods conference was Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, a board member of INET who is tied to both Soros and Stiglitz.
Sachs is engineer of a “shock treatment” economic doctrine that he has applied to other countries, most notably Bolivia and Poland. In both countries, critics charge, Sach’s doctrine led to economic failure.
In 2009, Sachs narrated an audio book titled “George Soros and Joseph Stiglitz – America: How They See Us.”
Stiglitz, meanwhile, has other ties to Soros. When he chaired the U.N.’s Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, the commission included Soros-tied economists, such as Robert Johnson, former chief economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee who previously was the managing director at Soros Fund Management. Johnson also is on the board of the Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute and the Institute for America’s Future.
Who’s behind Occupy Wall Street Movement?
Soros’ own ties to the anti-Wall Street movement are coming under some news media scrutiny.
Yesterday, in an article titled “Who’s behind the Wall St. protests?” Reuters reported on the billionaire’s connection to Adbusters, the magazine that is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
Adbusters is funded by the Tides Center, which acts like a massive clearinghouse of donations to a slew of liberal groups.
Critics have alleged the center acts to obscure the ultimate sources of donations by collecting large sums of money from a few large donors and then funneling the money to thousands of liberal causes.
Soros’ Open Society Institute is a prominent Tides Center donor, giving the group $3.5 million between 2007 and 2009 alone.
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott and Chris Elliott.
The key to Trump’s victory in 6 words
Patrice Lewis