Markets cannot create prosperity without robust public institutions, according to controversial economist Joseph Stiglitz, as reported in The Age this week. Stiglitz is a past winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, and he was Bill Clinton’s chief economic adviser and then chief economist of the World Bank. He argues that the International Monetary Fund has devastated developing economies with its one-size-fits-all deregulation regime.
Stiglitz has now co-authored The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. It’s not a polite question to ask, but it’s certainly one which needs to be addressed: What are the costs of the Iraq War, and what are the benefits? There have been considerably more coalition-of-the-willing soldiers killed in Iraq than there were civilians killed in the 9/11 attacks, and vastly greater numbers of Iraqi civilians have been killed. There were no weapons of mass destruction found, and there was no apparent link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. The economic costs have been enormous, for what benefit?
The current US recession is probably attributable in large part to the Iraq war. Stiglitz’s new book goes into some details about the economic damage which has been caused. According to an editorial review, “This book will forever change the way we think about the war.”