More idiocy from Joe Stiglitz

How do you destroy a country’s economy? Well, here are a few ideas. Hike taxes. Overregulate. Ratchet up government spending. Increase welfare entitlements. Make it your goal not to achieve greater prosperity for everyone but to achieve greater income and wealth equality.

Joseph Stiglitz

This, after all, is how the chavistas ran Venezuela, once one of the world’s most prosperous nations, into the ground. And, believe it or not, these are the prescriptions offered by economist Joseph Stiglitz, whom we profiled here at some length in October 2015 and whom we’re revisiting now because of a characteristically wacky article by him that appeared in the Guardian on May 30.

But first, a reminder: this, as we noted four years ago, is a man who has taught at Yale, Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia; who served as chief economist at the World Bank; who was a top advisor to the United Nations; who was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine; and who, yes, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001.

Paul Krugman

How, you may ask, did a man with such cockeyed economic ideas win a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics? Well, remember, Paul Krugman won one too. And Yasir Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize. Not every decision they make in Stockholm or Oslo is a brilliant one.

If you think it’s unfair to compare the economic philosophy of a Nobel laureate with the cockeyed socialist ideas that ruined Venezuela, consider this: Stiglitz is a socialist – an actual member of the Socialist International who, in 2008, headed up a Socialist International commission charged with figuring out a solution to the global financial crisis. He’s an enemy of the nation-state and particularly of American-style democratic capitalism, and would replace the current world order with a socialist global government, complete with a new global currency and a global income tax.

Georg Papandreou

But while we still have nation-states, Stiglitz isn’t above profiting from some of the more poorly run ones in ways that call into question his professional integrity. For example, he weighed in repeatedly in places like Time magazine on the Greek financial crisis, which he blamed entirely on Germany, not on Greece; what he failed to mention was he was a paid advisor to Greek prime minister George Papandreou. In 2014, when New York judge Thomas P. Griesa ordered Argentina to pay its creditors, Stiglitz badmouthed the judge, called the creditors “vultures,” pronounced that “America is throwing a bomb into the global economic system,” and passionately defended Argentinian president Cristina Kirchner; again, he omitted to inform his readers that he had long been on the Kirchner payroll, supposedly serving as an economic advisor, although to many observers it certainly looked as if he was selling his name and reputation to whitewash a kleptocracy.

Cristina Kirchner

Which brings us to Stiglitz’s recent piece for the Guardian. There’s not really anything new in it; what’s remarkable is the timing. Here’s the headline: “Neoliberalism must be pronounced dead and buried. Where next?” And here’s the subhead: “For decades the US and others have pursued a free-market agenda which has failed spectacularly.” An incredible thing to say at a time when the American economy is stronger than it has been in decades and is the world’s most competitive, with record employment and income levels for pretty much every population group and every category of job.

Donald J. Trump

Many people credit President Trump for this extraordinary boom. Not Stiglitz. He not only pretends that the boom isn’t happening; he smears Trump as an avatar of “far-right nationalism,” which to him is even worse than plain old neoliberalism or the “centre-left reformism” of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. In Stiglitz’s view, all three of these approaches should be junked in favor of a “radically different economic agenda” that he calls “progressive capitalism,” under which free markets would be a thing of the past and state-run economies would be the order of the day.

Stiglitz’s picture of what “progressive capitalism” would look like and how it would work is heavy on abstractions and light on specifics. “Governments have a duty to limit and shape markets…. government [should take] a more active role than neoliberalism prescribes.” Yet by the end of the article it’s clear what he‘s calling for. To be sure, he’s careful not to use the word Communism or even socialism, but those are the generally accepted names for what he prefers to call “progressive capitalism.”

Again, how weird to encounter a brief for socialism at a time when the chavistas’ Venezuela is dying and Trump’s America is thriving! But that’s old Joe for you.

Catching up with full-time defendant Cristina Kirchner

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Here at Useful Stooges we’ve spent a lot of time covering the misadventures of former Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

We’ve examined economist Joseph Stiglitz’s intimate (and profitable) relationship with the Kirchner clan. We’ve pondered hedge funder Kyle Bass’s foolish championing of Cristina’s disastrous economic polities. Then there’s Wall Street hotshot Georges Ugeux, who blamed Argentina’s fiscal problems not on Kirchner corruption but on the country’s sovereign-debt creditors. And economist Mark Weisbrot, who looked at an Argentina headed for financial disaster and proclaimed that it was doing “remarkably well.”

Jose Fernando Lopez
Jose Fernando Lopez

We met Kirchner crony José Francisco López, who was turned in to the cops by a bunch of nuns who caught him trying to throw plastic bags stuffed with crookedly acquired cash over their convent wall.

On December 17, 2015, we congratulated Argentina on electing as its new president the candidate who was not Cristina’s chosen successor. And on December 31, 2016, we celebrated New Year’s Eve by noting that a federal judge, Julian Ercolini, had ordered Cristina put on trial for corruption, along with her former Planning Minister, Julio de Vido, and her former state secretary for public buildings, the above-named José Francisco López.

Judge Claudio Bonadino

That was the last time we checked in with Cristina. Since then, the former President has been a full-time professional defendant. On March 23 of this year, another judge, Claudio Bonadino, also ordered her to stand trial, this time for instructing her country’s central bank “to sell dollar futures at artificially low prices, causing Argentina to lose hundreds of millions. Also indicted was her former Economy Minister, Axel Kicillof. In April she racked up her fourth criminal charge, this one for engaging in real-estate transactions for the purpose of money laundering. On that occasion her passport was confiscated, and her two children, Florencia and Maximo, were also indicted.

Amado Boudou

In June, in a desperate effort to acquire immunity from prosecution, she filed to run for Senate as the candidate of a new party she had founded just for that purpose. In the August elections, despite her massive corruption record, she actually won. At an October inquiry, Cristina “defended a secret pact negotiated by her government with the Iranian regime in 2011. And in November, her former VP, Amado Boudou, was arrested on charges of embezzlement and illicit association.

Now, despite her senatorial immunity, it may soon be Cristina’s turn to sample prison food. On December 7, Judge Bonadino asked the Senate to waive her immunity and allow her to be arrested and tried on charges of treason. The specific crime: covering up Iran’s role in the fatal 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. We’ll see what happens. Non-fans of the Kirchner clan may again have reason to celebrate on New Year’s Eve.

Cristina’s Christmas present

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Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Well, it’s happened again. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Argentina, Julian Ercolini, ordered a trial of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was president of that country from 2007 to 2015, on charges of corruption.

Also ordered to face trial were Julio de Vido, Kirchner’s sometime Minister of Federal Planning, and José Francisco López, former state secretary for public buildings.

According to the indictment, all three former officials are accused of forming an illegal association that was “created to commit crimes” involving the theft of “funds that were assigned to road works” – specifically, 52 projects in Santa Cruz province, where Kirchner’s late husband, Néstor Kirchner, served as governor before preceding her as president.

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Lázaro Báez

Already in court is contractor Lázaro Báez, whose company Austral Construcciones profited from the corruption scheme. Austral, it is reported, received over $4 billion in road-construction contracts from the Kirchner administration; of that amount, about $1 billion is estimated to have constituted illegal surcharges.

Judge Ercolini also froze $893 million in Kirchner’s personal assets.

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Cristina Kirchner with Axel Kiciloff

It’s the second time this has happened since she left office: in May, Kirchner, along with her former Economy Minister Axel Kiciloff and former Central Bank head Alejandro Vanoli, was indicted on charges of making illegal contracts to sell U.S. dollars at below market rates, supposedly with an eye to strengthening the peso. Instead of helping the Argentinian economy, these hijinks are said to have damaged it.

DYN15, BUENOS AIRES 04/09/06, EL SECRETARIO DE OBRAS PUBLICAS, JOSE LOPEZ DURANTE LA 1(TM) SESION PLENARIA DEL XV CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL "LOS LIMITES DE LA RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL DE LA EMPRESA", ESTA MA-ANA EN LA FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS ECONOMICAS DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES (UBA).FOTO:DYN/LUCIANO THIEBERGER.
José Francisco López

Inveterate readers of this site may recall that López, a longtime crony of Nestor Kirchner and “right-hand man” to de Vido, was arrested in June while trying to hide plastic bags full of money at a Buenos Aires convent. In addition to the plastic bags, he had a suitcase full of money, and he had driven these bags and suitcase to the convent in a car whose trunk was also full of money. The total stash: about $7 million dollars in the form of U.S. dollars, euros, yen, and other denominations. He also had a bunch of jewelry and several watches. And was packing a gun.

Apparently, all that dough was just a fraction of the massive sum fleeced from Argentinian taxpayers by by Kirchner, de Vido, López, Báez and company.

Kirchner, who was indicted in May for incompetent administration, was not taken into custody.

Those krazy Kirchner krooks

DYN15, BUENOS AIRES 04/09/06, EL SECRETARIO DE OBRAS PUBLICAS, JOSE LOPEZ DURANTE LA 1(TM) SESION PLENARIA DEL XV CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL "LOS LIMITES DE LA RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL DE LA EMPRESA", ESTA MA-ANA EN LA FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS ECONOMICAS DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES (UBA).FOTO:DYN/LUCIANO THIEBERGER.
José Francisco López

Okay, this one is kind of funny. But first you need to know who José Francisco López is.

Who is he? He’s a civil engineer and a longtime member of the sleazy Kirchner circle in Argentina. In 1991, when Nestor Kirchner became governor of the state of Santa Cruz, he put López on the administrative board of the state’s roads authority. Later he named López to executive positions in other state agencies. When Kirchner was elected president in 2003, he took López with him to Buenos Aires, appointing him to serve as the federal Minister of Public Works. As such, López was the “right-hand man” of the notorious Julio de Vido, the Minister of Federal Planning.

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De Vido, Cristina Kirchner, and López

In this position, which López retained under the presidency of Kirchner’s wife, Cristina, he wielded enormous power, had control of massive amounts of money, and was (along with de Vido) an object of widespread suspicion. Both were accused of a range of corrupt acts, such as pressuring construction firms for bribes and kickbacks and using federally funded construction projects to reward friends or punish enemies. One of de Vido’s and López’s associates, Ricardo Jaime, was eventually arrested, tried, and imprisoned for stealing evidence.

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Wads of cash in the trunk of López’s car

Which brings us to what happened this past June 14. On that day, in a district of Buenos Aires known as General Rodriguez, López was arrested while in possession of approximately $7 million dollars in cash in a range of denominations, including U.S. dollars, euros, and yen. The money was distributed among six large plastic bags, a suitcase, and the trunk of López’s car. In addition, López had on him an unidentified amount of jewelry, a receipt from a Beijing bank, and several high-end watches, including Rolexes and Omegas.

Oh, and he was packing a gun.

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After his arrest, López was fitted out with a helmet and bulletproof vest for his protection

There’s more. According to reports, López tried to hide the bags of money at a convent called Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima; it was, in fact, the resident nuns who fingered him, phoning the cops and reporting that (no kidding) some man was throwing plastic bags over their convent wall. When officers arrived at the scene, the ever-intrepid López tried to hide in the convent, where he endeavored in vain to persuade the nuns, who were obviously no fools, that he’d brought all that dough to donate it to them and that the police were trying to steal it.

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A still from The Sound of Music. Just in case you don’t know what a nun looks like.

It was unclear from news reports whether López also claimed to have intended to give the nuns the jewelry and watches.

In any event, the nuns didn’t buy it. When the cops turned up, López offered them bribes. That didn’t work, either.

Anyway, so it goes in Argentina in these immediate post-Kirchner days. Another day, another name added to the long roster of Kirchner functionaries being investigated for money-laundering –Néstor and Cristina’s favorite indoor sport.

The callow Kirchnerite: Ben Norton

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Ben Norton

This week we’ve been perusing the writings of highly prolific Salon contributor Ben Norton, who in a career that is now barely three years old has established himself as a leading American champion of Islam and hard-core socialism and a major detractor of the U.S., Israel, and “neoliberalism.”

Before we say goodbye to Norton, let’s take a quick look at another frequent topic of his work – namely Latin America. Unsurprisingly, he’s heaped praise on socialist leaders – such as Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina – who’ve damaged economies, arrested opponents, and suppressed civil liberties (after all, their hearts are in the right place!), while predictably demonizing “neoliberal” leaders who’ve brought their countries freedom and prosperity. Citing such far-left sources as Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald, Norton has referred to the impeachment of Brazil’s leftist president, Dilma Rousseff, as a “right-wing coup.” In May, he attacked New York Times editorial-board member Ernesto Londoño, who in a recent article had done two things of which Norton disapproved.

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Glenn Greenwald

What two things? First, Londoño had committed the unpardonable act of “bashing Venezuela’s elected leader.” In fact, what Londoño had done was simply to criticize the human-rights violations committed by the government of President Maduro – who, as Londoño truthfully noted, had become “a petty dictator.” Second, Londoño had praised the man Norton referred to as “Argentina’s new right-wing [read: non-socialist] President Mauricio Macri,” whom Norton criticized for having “capitulated to vulture funds” and for “forcing through brutal neoliberal cuts.” In reality, Londoño, in commenting about Marci, had merely noted with obvious admiration Macri’s longstanding criticism of chavista human-rights abuses.

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Ernesto Londoño

What about those “vulture funds” – the Kirchner crowd’s disparaging term for the U.S. hedge funds to which Argentina owned billions of dollars, but that Cristina Kirchner refused to pay a single peso, preferring instead to vilify her creditors and let her country default on its sovereign debt for the second time in fourteen years? Londoño hadn’t said a word about those funds; but Norton apparently couldn’t forgive Macri for having decided to pay his country’s debts and move beyond Cristina’s disastrous default. As for those “brutal neoliberal cuts”? Londoño hadn’t mentioned them, either. Of course, to Norton, neoliberalism is a dirty word, and budget cuts are by definition brutal. But the plain fact is that Macri – who appears to understand economics a good deal better than Norton does (and better, for that matter, than Chávez or Maduro or Kirchner or Rousseff) – is simply trying to keep Argentina from heading down the same road that has led Venezuela to utter economic ruin.

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Mauricio Macri

But what does Ben Norton know or care about such realities and responsibilities? Or about the long-term impact of capitalist vs. socialist economics on the everyday lives of ordinary people? Or, again, about the reality of day-to-day life in free, democratic societies vs. day-to-day life under putatively progressive autocrats or Islamic totalitarians? Again and again, he has shown that the lessons of the twentieth century are lost on him. He seems to bang away at his articles in a child’s little corner of world, sheltered from the ugly, distant realities of theocracy and despotism and clueless about how fortunate he is to be living in a free, prosperous country that he’s been taught to regard as the planet’s chief purveyor of evil. In every word that he writes, in short, Ben Norton comes across as an utter naif – which is to say that he is every bit as callow about the way the great world operates as he appears to be in his photographs.

The “able propagandist”: Mark Weisbrot

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Mark Weisbrot

A few months after Cristina Kirchner’s October 2011 re-election as president of Argentina, American economist Mark Weisbrot – whose career as a sycophant of socialist despots we’ve been charting the last couple of days – cheered her decision to nationalize her country’s largest oil company, the Spanish-owned YPF. This move was roundly condemned by other economists, who quite rightly recognized that it would drive sensible investors away from Argentina, at least until Kirchner was out of office. “Investors don’t like this, but does that matter?” Weisbrot asked, insisting that foreign investment isn’t “an essential ingredient of economic growth.” Indeed, he claimed, Cristina’s re-election was the result of a “success story” that’s “rarely told, mostly because it involved reversing many of the failed neoliberal policies…that brought the country to ruin in its worst recession of 1998-2002.” Her triumph, Weisbrot pronounced, was part of a process by which Latin America had “achieved its ‘second independence.’”

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Cristina Kirchner

And that’s really what Weisbrot’s enthusiasm for both Venezuelan chavismo and Argentina’s Kirchnerism is all about. When he’s written about those two countries, he hasn’t served up objective economic analysis but propaganda against Western (especially American) capitalism. He doesn’t want to see South Americans thrive; he wants to see them win their “independence” from the international capitalist system – the “colonialists,” the “imperialists” – even if their so-called “independence” means that the people live under the thumb of a petty tyrant who’s made him- or herself the center of a personality cult.

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Hugo Chávez

For Weisbrot, loyalty to these autocrats comes first. After Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, Weisbrot eulogized  him not only in print but at a February 2014 propaganda-fest, entitled “The Legacy of Hugo Chávez: At Home And Abroad,” at Venezuela’s D.C. Embassy. A month later he was in Caracas to head up another tribute sponsored by the Venezuelan government, this one called “Chávez, Communicator of the 21st Century.” Weisbrot also poured out the praise after Nestor Kirchner’s death in 2010, gushing that history would remember Kirchner “not only as a great president but also as an independence hero of Latin America.” Never mind that more and more Venezuelans and Argentinians felt that these leaders – far from giving them any kind of independence – had in fact been steadily robbing them of their freedoms.

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Nestor Kirchner

Given his obvious sycophancy and ideological enthrallment to these characters, what gives Weisbrot’s economic pronouncements any validity, any authority? Why should anybody take them seriously? Well, as we’ve noted, he’s associated with something called the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which is based in Washington, D.C. Certainly sounds legitimate, no? In fact, this “center” is something Weisbrot founded himself, in the way that your gardener or garbageman might appoint himself head of something called, say, the World Council of Cardiology or the International Center for Nuclear Research.

It may or may not be a coincidence, moreover, that the name of Weisbrot’s “center” closely echoes that of a respected British institution, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (no “and”), with which it has absolutely no connection. As one commentator puts it, Weisbrot’s “center” provides him with “an aura of credibility to journalists in the mainstream media who, when writing about Venezuela, want to get both sides of the story — including the leftist pro-Venezuela version that Weisbrot provides. And so they go to Weisbrot, an able propagandist.”

Indeed, when you come right down to it, CEPR is precisely what that commentator suggests – nothing more or less than a propaganda factory, an outfit that isn’t about carrying out responsible economic research but about churning out PR for the Venezuelan and Argentinian regimes.

Apocalypse no?

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Mark Weisbrot

Yesterday we began taking a long look at Mark Weisbrot, whose enthusiasm for chavista economics appears to know no bounds. In November 2013, he ruled out the possibility of a “Venezuelan apocalypse” of the kind that is now well underway. Then came last December’s parliamentary elections, when, as we’ve seen, the Venezuelan electorate registered its loathing for President Nicolás Maduro’s incompetent handling of the economy, his increasing restriction on civil rights, and other outrages. But Weisbrot hadn’t given up the fight. In an article  headlined “What Next For Venezuela?”, he started out by trying to put a good face on the people’s verdict. For one thing, he applauded Maduro for accepting the results of the vote. (In short, he praised the prez for doing the right thing and not violating the constitution; one might, in the same way, give somebody a pat on the back for not committing murder or rape.) For another, he attributed the heavy anti-Maduro tally to the opposition’s supposedly greater financial resources and to media support. 

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Jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López

Weisbrot strove throughout, in fact, to paint the chavista regime as responsible, law-abiding, and prepared to work harmoniously with its critics to fix the economy; meanwhile, he depicted those critics as violent, polarizing extremists who, unreasonably, refused to cooperate with the government in the interest of bringing the economy around. He also persisted in his now utterly ludicrous claim that life in the Bolivarian Republic had “changed substantially for the better” under Chávez and Maduro. Yes, he felt obliged to acknowledge the current economic crisis; but what he wouldn’t admit was that it was the predictable result of policies he himself had supported and helped devise. Nor did his pretty picture of the Maduro regime take into account such violations of human rights as the jailing of opposition leader Leopoldo López.

Former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner gestures as he arrives for a ceremony at the Casa Rosada Government Palace in Buenos Aires, June 17, 2008. Kirchner's wife Argentine President Cristina Fernandez's image deteriorated further in June as a nasty dispute with the farm sector entered its fourth month, according to a poll released on Tuesday. Her center-left government raised soy export taxes in mid-March, sparking farmer protests that have caused occasional food and fuel shortages. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci (ARGENTINA)
Late Argentine President Nestor Kirchner

All right. So who is Mark Weisbrot? He’s an economist who’s associated with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Sounds impressive, right? But his pronouncements on Venezuela and Argentina make it clear that Weisbrot is just about as far from the consensus on these nations’ economies as possible. Serious, objective members of his profession have been warning for years that Chávez, Maduro, and the Kirchners were leading their countries down the garden path. In September 2014, for example, The Economist ran an article about Venezuela subtitled “Probably the World’s Worst-Managed Economy.” It began: “A big oil producer unable to pay its bills during a protracted oil-price boom is a rare beast. Thanks to colossal economic mismanagement, that is exactly what Venezuela, the world’s tenth-largest oil exporter, has become.” A few months earlier, the same periodical ran a piece headlined “The Tragedy of Argentina: A Century of Decline.” A sampling: “Its standing as one of the world’s most vibrant economies is a distant memory….it trails Chile and Uruguay in its own back yard…. It has shut itself out of global capital markets…Property rights are insecure….Statistics cannot be trusted.”

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Cristina Kirchner

Such, more or less, is the verdict of virtually all respected economists on these two countries. But Weisbrot sings a different tune. In 2007 – five years after Argentina defaulted on its sovereign debt – he toasted Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s victory in that year’s election, calling it “not difficult to explain” given her husband’s glowing performance in office during the previous four years. In 2011, with the country’s inflation rate hovering at around 25%, Weisbrot – under the headline “Cristina Kirchner and Argentina’s Good Fortune” – assured readers of the Guardian that Argentina under Cristina, who was then running for re-election, was doing “remarkably well” and undergoing a “remarkable expansion.”

And then? More tomorrow.

Nick Dearden vs. the “vultures”

Yesterday we met Nick Dearden, head of an anti-capitalist British group called Global Justice Now and frequent contributor to the Guardian. As recently as January of this year, Dearden described Venezuela as a “beacon of hope.” He’s also blamed the poverty of countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo on American “vulture funds.”

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Nick Dearden

The word vulture appears frequently in Dearden’s work. In a 2011 piece, he wrung his hands over the economic plight of Argentina, which, again, he blamed not on the Kirchner regime’s massive corruption and financial irresponsibility but on the creditors who actually dared to expect the Buenos Aires government to honor its debts. Dearden gave a thumbs-up to Argentina’s 2001 default (which “was undoubtedly the right thing to do”) and slammed creditors (a.k.a. “vulture funds”) for refusing to walk away meekly and let Kirchner & co. screw them over. He further accused Argentina’s main creditor, NML Capital, of “harassing” Argentina – by which he meant that NML, in order to try to collect the money it was owed, had had to take the Kirchner government to court .

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Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Meanwhile, the closest he would come to admitting the deep, endemic problems afflicting the Kirchner regime was to say that “Everything is not perfect in Argentina to this day.” He acknowledged that Argentina shouldn’t have borrowed such massive sums in the first place – but instead of criticizing the Kirchner regime for taking out loans, he blamed the banks for making them. Fighting poverty, Dearden asserted, requires profound systemic change: “The financial system…needs to be directed for the benefit of people everywhere.” And part of this change is that “[c]reditors must accept the downside when investments go wrong just as they happily accept the upside when they go right.” Meaning, apparently, that when debtors choose not to pay their debts, creditors should just shrug and walk away.

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Joseph E. Stiglitz

We’ve written at length about Joseph E. Stiglitz, the economist, who, among other things, is a big U.N. booster, championing the idea that the U.S. and other countries should effectively hand over their sovereignty to the international organization. Dearden is in the same camp, contrasting the G8 – which he views as a gang of imperialist, colonialist bullies that “should by rights be dead and buried” – with the U.N. itself, which he see as a compassionate force for the world’s poorer and less powerful countries.

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Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann

In a 2009 article for the Guardian, Dearden cited Stiglitz approvingly and at length on the need for thoroughgoing “reform” of “the international trade and financial system,” including extensive debt cancellation, a “new reserve currency to replace the dollar.” Dearden also quoted, with hearty agreement, the then-president of the General Assembly, Nicaraguan priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, to the effect that “[t]he anti-values of greed, individualism and exclusion should be replaced by solidarity, common good and inclusion” and that our “profit-centred economy” should give way to “a people-centred economy.”

Presumably like the terrific, robust one in Nicaragua. Or Venezuela, that “beacon of hope.”

“Beacon of hope”: Nick Dearden’s Venezuela delusion

Over the last year or so, as Venezuela’s economy has plummeted and the Venezuelan people have suffered increasingly from food shortages, electricity shutoffs, and the like, many longtime cheerleaders for chavismo have dummied up. Not Nick Dearden. In January, in a piece that read like some kind of twisted Onion-like attempt at a joke, he enthused over Venezuela’s “food revolution.”

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Nick Dearden

Food revolution? What? Dearden explained: just before the new, anti-socialist National Assembly was seated in January, supporters of the regime passed a new law that, in Dearden’s words, laid “the foundation for a truly democratic food system” by banning genetically modified seeds and setting up “democratic structures to ensure that seeds cannot be privatized and indigenous knowledge cannot be sold off to corporations.” The new law, Dearden maintained, would promote “a form of farming that works with nature” and that would “make the country independent of international food markets.” This, pronounced Dearden, was “hugely impressive…because it extends decision making deep down into Venezuelan society.” In sum: “Venezuela has lit a beacon of hope.”

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Venezuela’s “food revolution”

Yes, a beacon of hope. A curious way (to put it mildly) to describe a country where people are now storming grocery stores and eating cats and dogs. The lights have, quite literally, gone out: in late April, in yet another example of its sharp economic thinking, the government imposed a two-day work week to conserve electricity.  

But whacked-out judgments are par for the course for Nick Dearden. Currently the director of something called Global Justice Now (which describes itself as “a campaign group that mobilises people in the UK for change, and act[s] in solidarity with those fighting injustice, particularly in the global south”) and formerly director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign (a “coalition” of UK groups “calling for the unjust and unpayable debts of the poorest countries to be cancelled”), he’s a one-man storehouse of bad ideas, which he’s shared frequently over the years in op-eds for the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere.

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Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

This is a guy who believes that capitalism ruins everything. When it comes to foreign aid, he’s a fervent supporter of the longstanding Western policy of throwing truckfuls of money at Africa, which has mainly served to enrich dictators and keep poor countries from getting off the ground. After a so-called “hunger summit” in 2013, Dearden decried the idea of trying to encourage the development of market economies in Africa, and mocked “the idea that ‘the market knows best.’” Instead, he supported land redistribution and collective farming. (After all, look how spectacularly successful that approach has been in Venezuela.)

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Mobutu

In a 2012 article, he pondered the phenomenon of poverty in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). In real life, the principal villain in the story is Mobutu Sese Seko, who was the country’s dictator from 1965 to 1997, and who, like many another tyrant on that continent, soaked his nation’s treasury for all he could. But Dearden places the real blame on Western banks that loaned money to Mobutu and that have had the audacity to seek to have their loans repaid. Dearden actually put the word “repayment” in scare quotes, accused creditors of “draining the DRC of wealth,” and (of course) smeared those creditors as “vultures.”

As we’ll see tomorrow, the word vulture crops up a lot in Dearden’s writings.

Stiglitz’s latest slimy gig

The other day we delved into a recent New York Times op-ed that sought to whitewash the massively corrupt Kirchner kleptocracy in Argentina, to demonize its creditors, and to defend its indefensible economic policies. The author of the op-ed was none other than the chief architect of those policies, and one of the Kirchners’ more prominent foreign courtiers and sycophants – economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.

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Joseph E. Stiglitz

This wasn’t Stiglitz’s first appearance here at Useful Stooges. In several articles last October, we pondered his perverse enthusiasm for command economies, his championing of a socialist U.N. superstate, and other perverse positions that make one wonder just how this character ever managed to score the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

We were still shaking our heads over Stiglitz’s Times op-ed when his name again made a prominent appearance in the press. On April 13, the Guardian mentioned Stiglitz in connection with the internationally notorious Panama Papers case.

20131029 Islands statsminister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson vid Nordiska rådets session i Oslo. Foto: Magnus Fröderberg/norden.org
Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson

You’ve heard of the Panama Papers, of course? They’re a trove of some 11.5 million documents that, leaked last year to the Süddeutsche Zeitung and first reported on earlier this month, have caused worldwide scandal. They describe in detail the use of various shell companies by powerful figures (including UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, Saudi King Salman, and Icelandic premier Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson) for nefarious purposes ranging from fraud to tax evasion. The Guardian article outlined plans by the so-called JITSIC network – a task force of 31 major Western nations, plus China, Japan, South Korea, and South Africa – to take aggressive action against these activities.

UAE president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, attends the final session of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait City on December 15, 2009. Energy-rich states of the Gulf do not feel threatened by Iraq's plans to massively expand its oil production, Kuwait's foreign minister said. The GCC alliance is made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. AFP PHOTO/YASSER AL-ZAYYAT (Photo credit should read YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty Images)
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan

How does Stiglitz figure in all this? Well, it turns out that while those responsible-minded JITSIC countries were criticizing Panama’s longtime willingness to host shady shell companies and cover up their crooked activities, Panama was handing Stiglitz a new gig. As the Guardian put it, “The Panama government announced that Joseph Stiglitz…would be one member of an international panel formed to review Panama’s legal and financial practices and recommend improvements.”

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King Salman

To us, this sounds like an exceedingly fishy development. First of all, Panama doesn’t need a Nobel Prize-winning economist to tell it to clean up its act; if it wants to be regarded as a transparent financial actor, what it has to do is pretty obvious. Second, given Stiglitz’s track record as an apologist for corrupt regimes, he’s highly unlikely to recommend that Panama institute any meaningful reforms.

What’s going on here, then? Most likely, Stiglitz is providing air cover – lending his name to Panama in its effort to whitewash its reputation as a cash hideout. Is he being paid for this? That’s one question the JITSIC countries might want an answer to – although even if he’s not collecting a fee this time around, his readiness to play ball with the creeps who run Panama deserves scrutiny. For this guy is looking more and more like an ambulance-chaser for unsavory governments.

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Petro Poroshenko

Why does any of this matter? Well, one reason it matters is that places like the New York Times still take Stiglitz seriously as a wise, objective commentator on economic affairs. Another reason is that he’s on the faculty of Columbia University, which expects from its professors a high level of transparency – including full reporting to the college administration of any possible “financial conflicts of interest in research.” But although Stiglitz’s résumé repeatedly cries out “conflict of interest,” he hasn’t reported any such conflicts.

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George Papandreou

Just look at some of the folks he’s been in deep with over the years. In 2009, the generals who rule Myanmar took him on as a “consultant.” How much was he paid? What was the relationship between his work for the generals and his glowing public statements on Myanmar’s economy?

Stiglitz also “counseled” former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. Again, what was his fee? Were his positive comments about Greece’s financial health compromised by these arrangements? In 2013 he invited Panandreou to speak at the Columbia World Leaders Forum – but, in violation of the university’s guidelines, he didn’t disclose their financial connection.

Was the invitation some kind of quid pro quo?

DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 26JAN12 - Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of Ethiopia speaks during the session 'Africa -- From Transition to Transformationy' at the Annual Meeting 2012 of the World Economic Forum at the congress centre in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2012. Copyright by World Economic Forum swiss-image.ch/Photo by Monika Flueckiger
Meles Zenawi

The same question arises in the case of the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, whom Stiglitz viewed as a close friend, whose economic policies he praised, and whom he invited to speak at the 2010 Columbia World Leaders Forum. That invitation brought fierce criticism on the website of the Columbia Spectator, where scores of Ethiopians charged the university with legitimizing a “tyrant” who was guilty of “genocide, ethnic cleansing…and other…atrocities.” Jagdish Baghwati, an Ethiopian economist at Columbia, condemned the invitation as the act of academic “entrepreneurs” who were using the college to “ingratiate” themselves with criminal regimes “to get PR and ‘goodies’ for themselves at African summits.” And in a letter to the university’s president, Ethiopian journalist Serkalem Fasil described how she was imprisoned for doing her job, gave birth prematurely as a result of abuse there, and, in the ultimate example of “incomprehensible vindictiveness,” was denied by Zenawi the incubator doctors said her baby needed.

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Renmin University

And what about China? Stiglitz has some kind of relationship with the Renmin University of China Institute of Economic Research – which, of course, amounts to having a relationship with the Chinese state. Again, he hasn’t made public any information about income he’s earned from this gig. What he has made public is his supposed enthusiasm for an alternative to the single reserve currency – a position neatly in line with Beijing’s – and his claim that concerns about risks to the Chinese economy are overblown.

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Evo Morales

Then there’s Bolivia, where in a single day Stiglitz received two honorary doctorates. After meeting in 2006 with Evo Morales, that country’s socialist strongman (and longtime Castro chum), Stiglitz began speaking out in favor of Morales’s nationalization of private property. What happened at that meeting? Did money change hands? Or did Evo – who’s not exactly famous for his eloquence – dazzle Stiglitz with the brilliance of his argument for expropriation?

Are you beginning to discern a pattern here?

The President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo speaks during a press conference to announce he will comply with the Paraguayan justice on the paternity case, on April 20, 2009 in Asuncion. Earlier today, Benigna Leguizamon, 27, gave Lugo a one-day period to acknowledge the paternity of Lucas Fernando Leguizamon, an alleged son of his, otherwise she would start a lawsuit. AFP PHOTO/Norberto Duarte (Photo credit should read NORBERTO DUARTE/AFP/Getty Images)
Fernando Lugo

These aren’t the only leaders who’ve availed themselves of Stiglitz’s “services.” Others include Fernando Lugo, former president of Paraguay, and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former prime minister of Spain. Stiglitz has been a “financial consultant” to the Icelandic government and has given “expert testimony” on Ireland’s sovereign wealth fund.

What did he pocket? Who knows? In none of these cases has Stiglitz disclosed how much he’s been paid for his work – or, for that matter, exactly what his “work” has consisted of. How much of his “consulting” for heads of state and government has involved actual consulting – and how much of it has amounted to nothing more than an agreement to publicly promote their horrible economic policies? In other words, is he simply raking in cash from leftist governments in exchange for positive PR – like a crooked film critic selling a movie producer a rave?

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José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

Stiglitz hasn’t only done deals with governments. He’s delivered speeches under the auspices of a long list of Funds and Centers, Institutes and Coalitions, Foundations and Iniatitives, Councils and Commissions. How much did they pay? Again, mum’s the word. (Even Hillary Clinton makes public her lecture fees.) But more to the point: what were they really paying for? Did Stiglitz give these institutions tough, smart advice that they perhaps didn’t want to hear – or, as with his governmental clients, did he affirm their own wisdom to their faces and then come away touting it to the world?

To be sure, if Stiglitz is monetizing his Nobel, he wouldn’t be the first to do so. But there can’t be too many other Nobelists who’ve been so aggressive about it. Put it this way: if they awarded a Nobel Prize for using your reputation as a serious economist to help prop up unscrupulous autocrats, he’d have no competition.