White House Treatment of Stiglitz Reveals Lack of Respect for 'Progressive-Economist Wing'

Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh reports that progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz, “the man who predicted the global financial meltdown,” is not getting his due respect from the Obama administration. Hirsh writes that the Nobel Prize-winning economist has “heard barely a word from the White House.” For his part, Stiglitz has been critical of the Obama administration:

Stiglitz had been hammering at Obama’s economic team for its handling of the financial crisis. He wrote that the stimulus program was too small to be effective—a criticism that has since swelled into a chorus, though Obama says he’s not adding more money. Stiglitz also had called the administration’s bailout plan a giveaway to Wall Street, an “ersatz capitalism” that would save the banks’ investors and creditors and screw the taxpayers. [...]

Despite the Obama team’s occasional efforts to reach out to him, Stiglitz remains deeply unhappy about the administration’s approach to the financial crisis. Rather than breaking up or restructuring the big banks that failed, “the Obama administration has actually expanded the notion of ‘too big to fail,’” he says.

Paul Krugman, himself a Nobel Prize-winning economist who has had his differences with the Obama administration, writes that “the real story is more about excluded points of view than excluded people.” Krugman observes “the absence of a progressive-economist wing” in White House economic discussions.