oseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and former adviser to US President Bill Clinton, says the consensus surrounding neoliberal economic thought has come to an end.
Speaking with Business Insider after the launch of his latest book, “The Euro: How A Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe” — which argues that the fundamental flaws with the euro and the broader European economy are causing huge problems for the continent and risk leading to its downfall — Stiglitz argued that neoliberalism, the dominant school of economic thinking in the West for the past 30 years or so, is on its last legs.
Since the late 1980s and the so-called Washington Consensus, neoliberalism — essentially the idea that free trade, open markets, privatisation, deregulation, and reductions in government spending designed to increase the role of the private sector are the best ways to boost growth — has dominated the thinking of the world’s biggest economies and international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.