Los felices 90: La semilla de la destrucción

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Overview

La década de los noventa marcó el surgimiento de la Nueva Economía, caracterizada por unos incrementos de productividad que duplicaban, o triplicaban, lo conocido durante las dos décadas precedentes. La década de los noventa marcó el surgimiento de la Nueva Economía, caracterizada por unos incrementos de productividad que duplicaban, o triplicaban, lo conocido durante las dos décadas precedentes. Pero los felices noventa se acabaron bien pronto, antes incluso de que Clinton abandonara la Casa Blanca. La economía entró en recesión y los escándalos empresariales destronaron a los sumos sacerdotes del capitalismo: daba la impresión de que los directivos de algunas empresas se estaban lucrando a expensas de sus accionistas y empleados. La globalización, que tan recientemente se había saludado como el comienzo de un mundo nuevo, también parecía verse con malos ojos. La reunión de la Organización Mundial del Comercio celebrada en Seattle en 1999, que tenía por fin ahondar en la apertura del mundo, acabó en disturbios protagonizados por grupos preocupados por los efectos, a veces devastadores, que la globalización tiene sobre los más pobres. Es necesario arrojar nueva luz sobre lo que ocurrió esos años, acentuando la necesidad de reinterpretarlos. Este libro no se limita a rescribir la historia económica de los noventa: es, en la misma medida, una historia del futuro, del punto en el que los países desarrollados se encuentran en este momento, y de hacia dónde deberían tender para que la economía mundial llegue a un curso más justo y estable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788430616022
Publisher:	TAURUS
Publication date:	12/10/2010
Sold by:	PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE GRUPO EDITORIAL
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	665 KB
Language:	Spanish

About the Author

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Premio Nobel de Economía en 2001, es actualmente catedrático de economía en la Universidad de Columbia tras una intensa carrera académica en prestigiosas universidades, como Yale, Oxford y Stanford. Además, ha sido asesor económico del gobierno de Bill Clinton y economista jefe y vicepresidente senior del Banco Mundial. Autor del bestseller internacional El malestar en la globalización(Taurus, 2002), también ha publicado Los felices 90 (Taurus, 2003), Cómo hacer que funcione la globalización (Taurus, 2006), Comercio justo para todos (Taurus, 2007), Laguerra de los tres billones de dólares (Taurus, 2008), Caída libre (Taurus, 2010) y El precio de la desigualdad (Taurus, 2012).

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Premio Nobel de Economía en 2001, es actualmente catedrático de economía en la Universidad de Columbia tras una intensa carrera académica en prestigiosas universidades, como Yale, Oxford y Stanford. Además, ha sido asesor económico del gobierno de Bill Clinton y economista jefe y vicepresidente senior del Banco Mundial. Autor del bestseller internacional El malestar en la globalización(Taurus, 2002), también ha publicado Los felices 90 (Taurus, 2003), Cómo hacer que funcione la globalización (Taurus, 2006), C omercio justo para todos (Taurus, 2007), Laguerra de los tres billones de dólares (Taurus, 2008), Caída libre (Taurus, 2010) y El precio de la desigualdad (Taurus, 2012).

Editorial Reviews

As an economic adviser to President Clinton and a World Bank official, Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz (Globalization and Its Discontents) had a front-row seat for the financial boom of the 1990s. He discusses how, contrary to all theory, reducing the national deficit led to the economic upswing, but his interest lies not in how the bubble happened but in those qualities that eventually led to its collapse. One of his chief arguments is that although efficient markets depend upon the free flow of information, deregulation enabled corporations like Enron to present distorted financial data, "stealing money from their unwary shareholders" in the process. Financial analysts also withheld frank assessments from investors to maintain their insider status, and the "conflicts of interest gone out of control" inevitably led to disaster. The book suggests Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan could have slowed things down, but failed to back up tentative public remarks with firm action. The Clinton administration also comes in for some of the blame for pressuring foreign countries to adopt policies it wouldn't apply to its own economy. But the largest portion of the blame is doled out to George W. Bush for mishandling the initial stages of the recession, allowing it to spiral dangerously in the name of free markets. Instead, Stiglitz calls for just enough regulation to promote what he dubs "Democratic Idealism," a fairly standard liberal platform of social justice and economic reform. Whatever one thinks of his long-term goals, the straightforward and well-reasoned summation of the last decade's market trends has a convincing ring of truth. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publisher's Weekly

Since his childhood in Gary, Ind., an archetypal dying city of the passing industrial age, where, as he once said, "the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster," Joseph Stiglitz has been asking essential questions about how and why economic policies work or fail. Drawing on his experiences from inside the Clinton administration, as well as on the economic theories he honed at America's elite universities (ideas for which he won a Nobel prize for economics in 2001), he seems particularly well suited to deal with the financial boom of the Clinton era and the bust that followed. ---David Maraniss

The Washington Post

A best-of-times, worst-of-times overview of the previous decade by whip-smart economist and presidential advisor Stiglitz (Economics/Columbia Univ.; Globalization and Its Discontents, 2002). Adam Smith’s playing field-leveling invisible hand, observes Stiglitz, sometimes can’t be seen because it is in fact not there. So it seemed through much of the 1990s, which saw American capitalism claw its way up staggering new heights of inequity and avarice. Take the stock market’s ever more pronounced dislike, throughout the decade, of giving the small investor an even break with equal access to intelligence, about which Stiglitz remarks, "Unfettered markets, rampant with conflicts of interest, can lead to inefficiency. We can never eliminate the problems; we can, however, mitigate them. In the nineties, we made them worse." Some of the ways in which the economy was made worse, Stiglitz writes, were political in nature; the Clinton administration, which he served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisors, failed to get a handle on such things as funny corporate accounting practices and the endless corporate appropriation of the public domain. Fault Clinton Stiglitz does, and at many points as he turns from NAFTA to the WTO to the Enron scandal and on. Yet, he warns, it is a mistake to attribute to that administration the collapse of the great bubble and the dive into recession that closed the decade: though Clinton may earn middling marks, Stiglitz slyly notes, as a teacher he grades on a curve, and Clinton positively shines by comparison with what came before and after. That collapse brought with it the evaporation of trillions and a subsequent performance well below the economy’spotential—but no real curbing of such matters as executive compensation, merger mania, and unemployment. Contra many of his colleagues, Stiglitz calls for more rather than less regulation, noting that the bursting bubble did bring at least some useful reforms in accounting practices and the public disclosure of information. Likely to cause indigestion among some Wall Streeters, but a thoughtful, accessible survey of a history that’s still unfolding.

Kirkus Reviews

Nobel Prize–winning economist Stiglitz worked as the chief economist at the World Bank and served on President Clinton's Economic Council of Advisers. Just like his previous book, Globalization and Its Discontents (El malestar en la globalización), this engaging economic history of the United States during the 1990s has already topped U.S. and Latin American best seller lists. A poignant Washington insider's account, the book explores how a prosperous economic bubble led to a serious financial crisis. It is full of juicy details and sharp critiques of different administrations, as well as interesting subplots—creative accounting, corporate corruption, tax cuts, and more. Once again, Stiglitz welcomes noneconomist readers by casting arid technicalities aside. Although this translation keeps the smooth flow of the original, it contains a few recurrent vocabulary problems. "Stock options," for example, is not even translated into Spanish, and "research and development" becomes I&D, which probably stands for "investigación y desarrollo," but the translators never make this clear. The most serious flaw, though, is the improper use of gobierno, which in Spanish refers to a specific government administration. The translators repeatedly interchange the correct term, estado, or "state," as in separation between church and state, with gobierno, as if the words mean the same thing. This confuses the essential message of the book, since Stiglitz compares how different administrations addressed similar problems, some passages include both right and wrong versions of gobierno. The proper "gobierno de Clinton" ("Clinton administration") isfollowed by a literally senseless "gobierno federal" ("federal government"). Despite these flaws, this book is essential reading for those wanting to understand the source of the economic problems the United States faces today. With a better translation, this title would be highly recommended. As it is, it is recommended for bookstores and for academic and public libraries.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
—Patricia Arancibia, Brooklyn, NY

Criticas