Witold Gadomski is plainly relishing the opportunities the current financial troubles offer for a fight. Here he is in last weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza, telling us all to calm down, calm down. There is no cause for alarm. The system works.
He quotes Stiglitz: “The fall of Wall Street has shown the world that a certain way of economic functioning is unsustainable. What is happening is a sign that the calls to liberalise the financial markets were mistaken” (a back translation into English). Gadomski comments that Stiglitz cannot decide if he is an academic or anti-globalisation ideologue. I won’t pretend to know what’s going on – pretending to know is the job of Henry Paulson – but Stiglitz’s words strike me as being very cautious and handily borne out by the collapsing right and left of banks. Then again, Gadomski has in the past won an award for “defending the principles of market economics”- regardless of how dismally they fail. It’s funny how talking up the markets is practically a patriotic obligation while talking them down is a dastardly act of treachery.