Freefall: America, Free
Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
An incisive look at the global economic crisis, our flawed response, and the
implications for the world’s future prosperity.
The Great Recession, as it has come to be called, has impacted more people worldwide
than any crisis since the Great Depression. Flawed government policy and unscrupulous
personal and corporate behavior in the United States created the current financial
meltdown, which was exported across the globe with devastating consequences. The crisis
has sparked an essential debate about America’s economic missteps, the soundness of this
country’s economy, and even the appropriate shape of a capitalist system.
Few are more qualified to comment during this turbulent time than Joseph E. Stiglitz.
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Stiglitz is “an insanely great economist,
in ways you can’t really appreciate unless you’re deep into the field” (Paul
Krugman, New York Times). In Freefall, Stiglitz traces the origins of
the Great Recession, eschewing easy answers and demolishing the contention that America
needs more billion-dollar bailouts and free passes to those “too big to fail,” while
also outlining the alternatives and revealing that even now there are choices ahead that
can make a difference. The system is broken, and we can only fix it by examining the
underlying theories that have led us into this new “bubble capitalism.”
Ranging across a host of topics that bear on the crisis, Stiglitz argues convincingly for
a restoration of the balance between government and markets. America as a nation faces
huge challenges - in health care, energy, the environment, education, and manufacturing -
and Stiglitz penetratingly addresses each in light of the newly emerging global economic
order. An ongoing war of ideas over the most effective type of capitalist system, as well
as a rebalancing of global economic power, is shaping that order. The battle may finally
give the lie to theories of a “rational” market or to the view that America’s global
economic dominance is inevitable and unassailable.
For anyone watching with indignation while a reckless Wall Street destroyed homes,
educations, and jobs; while the government took half-steps hoping for a “just-enough”
recovery; and while bankers fell all over themselves claiming not to have seen what was
coming, then sought government bailouts while resisting regulation that would make future
crises less likely, Freefall offers a clear accounting of why so many Americans
feel disillusioned today and how we can realize a prosperous economy and a moral society
for the future.
The New York Times - Kevin Phillips
Freefall has three standout strengths. First, it is a powerful indictment of Wall
Street, the United States financial sector and the Federal Reserve Board. Second, it
offers a reluctant but persuasive elaboration of how the Obama administration decided to
embrace the financial sector and the Fed, continuing and enlarging both the bailout and
the too-big-to-fail philosophy that it inherited from George W. Bush. Finally, it is a
blunt attack on Stiglitz's own profession, for transforming "scientific
discipline" into "free-market capitalism's biggest
cheerleader"…Stiglitz's virtue is that he minces few words.
400 pages, Hardcover