Project Syndicate: Fed Up with the Fed and The Crisis of our Crises

Today we will feature two articles which recently appeared on Project Syndicate. One is by Joseph Stiglitz (Fed Up with the Fed). He calls on the Fed not to raise interest rates right now and to be sensitive to the fact that Fed decisions impact real people trying to make a living. 

The other article is co-authored by Jeremy Adelman (Princeton) and Anne-Laure Delatte (also Princeton). It is titled "The Crisis or our Crises." The article follows the same theme you often see in articles and speeches posted on the BIS web site. It laments the fact the global cooperation appears to be at a low ebb and suggest this is a cause for the crisis hot spots around the world. Below are a couple of quotes from each article to give a feel for them.

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Fed Up with the Fed

"At the end of every August, central bankers and financiers from around the world meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the US Federal Reserve’s economic symposium. This year, the participants were greeted by a large group of mostly young people, including many African- and Hispanic Americans.

The group was not there so much to protest as to inform. They wanted the assembled policymakers to know that their decisions affect ordinary people, not just the financiers who are worried about what inflation does to the value of their bonds or what interest-rate hikes might do to their stock portfolios. And their green tee shirts were emblazoned with the message that for these Americans, there has been no recovery."

The Crisis of our Crises

"At first glance, today’s major international crises seem to have little in common. Some, such as Greece’s debt drama, are economic disasters; others, like Syria’s implosion, are characterized by brutality and political chaos; and still others, most notably Ukraine’s predicament, fall somewhere in between. But, despite what policymakers might like to believe, these events are not unrelated. On the contrary, they reflect a deeper crisis of international integration and cooperation."             . . . . . . 


"Muddling through can lead to only one outcome: disintegration. Only when world leaders recognize the common source and the inter-connectedness of current international crises will they be in a position to address them effectively."