Paraguay: Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz Wants to Advise New President
The winner of a Nobel Prize in Economy, Joseph Stiglitz will be in Paraguay later this month to participate in the inaugural events of incoming president Fernando Lugo. He will take advantage of his time by participating in a debate in the Paraguayan congress. In fact, he also indicated that he is very excited at the possibility of advising the new head of state [es]. In order to do this, he must receive a full report of the current state of the economy.
Pepa Kostianovsky of De Pe a Pa [es] wonders what Stiglitz will say after seeing where things stand:
Supongo que no le va a extrañar demasiado que una sociedad que sale de soportar más de cuarenta años de dictadura, para continuar por casi dos decenios gobernada por el mismo grupo que acumuló riquezas a la sombra del tirano, no haya logrado encausar su economía hacia un panorama más equitativo, sino que por el contrario se haya agrandado la brecha. Es natural que los ricos consideren su condición como un derecho adquirido.
No creo que lo sorprenda demasiado el que la clase empresarial haya optado por la especulación, en lugar de la inversión, y preferido el comercio de triangulación a la industrialización de materias primas, por ejemplo.
I suppose he won't find it so strange to find a society that has gone through 40 years of dictatorship, and that has been governed for nearly two decades by the same group that accumulated wealth under the shadow of tyranny, to not have moved its economy towards something more equitable, but instead seeing the divide has grown. It is natural for the wealthy to see their status as something as an obtained right.
I don't think he would be surprised to see the business class having opted for speculation, instead of investment, and its preference for triangulation commerce instead of the industrialization of raw materials, for example.
Michel Quomo of Zoopolítica [es] has high hopes for the economist, but hopes that others are not disappointed:
Ojalá en serio esté interesado en nuestro caso, y pueda darnos una manito para organizar las cosas en el país. No sólo porque el tipo la tiene muy clara, sino por la llegada que tiene entre los progres que revolotean alrededor de Fernando Armindo.
Lo único que espero es que cuando el tipo les cuente que en realidad las críticas son hacia ciertas estructuras de poder mundial, y no contra al capitalismo en sí, y que al final la economía de libre mercado ES la solución, los cuervos (que sólo lo conocían de nombre, por haberlo visto de reojo en Rebelión) no salgan volando espantados diciendo que el tipo “se vendió al Sistema”.
Hopefully he is seriously interested in our case, and that he can give us a hand to organize things in the country. Not only because the guy understands things, but because the influence he has amongst the progressives that flutter around Fernando Armindo (Lugo).
The only thing that I hope for is that when the guy tells them the reality that the criticisms are against certain global power structures and not against capitalism itself, and that in the end, a free market economy IS the solution, that the crows (that only knew him (Stiglitz) by name, by seeing him in Rebelión)(an alternative website) that they don't become frightened saying that the guy “sold out to the system.”
Stiglitz has also mentioned that should he work with the new government that he will not charge for his services [es] .
