With interest rates and bank credit officially manipulated, what market-fundamentalism does statism's nobelist Stiglitz refer to?

We have many central banks purchasing public debt in outrageous amounts, and thereby manipulating and distorting all interest rates yield curves in favor of their governments.

And the regulators, with their risk-weighted capital requirements, allow banks to leverage much differently their equity, depending on the ex ante perceived or decreed risk; something which distorts entirely the allocation of bank credit to the real economy.

And since the risk weight of the Sovereign has been decreed 0%, while that of We the People has been set at 100%, most of that regulatory manipulation is in favor of the government.

And then time after time we hear experts, like Nobel Prize winner Professor Joseph Stiglitz, attributing most of our current problems to neo-liberalism and market fundamentalism; and often suggesting that the solution lies in increased government spending. What free markets are they referring to? In Stiglitz case, could it be he is only a statist nobelist creatively adapting the facts to his storyline?

PS. I have not read Stiglitz’ “The Euro” yet but, from what I hear he does not link Euro’s troubles in any way to loony bank regulations.  The Euro did indeed present challenges but, when in Venezuela I wrote my “Burning the bridges in Europe”, I had no idea it would also have to face such statist and distorting regulations.

PS. When utilities were being privatized in South America, I often heard accusations in terms of savage neo-liberalism. Since these utilities were not adjudicated to whoever offered to serve us citizens the best and the cheapest, but to whoever offered to pay the government the most, a tax advance that left us with a huge bill to pay at private investment rates of return, to me those privatizations were more an expression sadist statism.

We need a Pro-Equality-Tax on income and wealth that keeps the redistribution profiteers away

I am convinced it behooves all of us who have much more than those who have much less to think about the need of a Pro-Equality tax on income and wealth.

That need is mainly the result of interferences and abuses of free markets, many of these promoted by governments, many of these hidden in well-intentioned regulations.

If a Pro-Equality-Pot were to be redistributed through current ordinary channels, not much would change, in fact inequality and other problems could get much worse.

As an absolute minimum we must keep all redistribution profiteers away.

The Pro-Equality-Pot should be distributed in equal parts to all nationals, line through a Universal Basic Income scheme, and that should not cost, tops, more than 2 percent to do.

To achieve that I believe it is indispensable to separate the Pro-Equality taxes from all other ordinary taxes paid to keep governments running.

That separation would bring much needed transparency, which also helps us to make it harder for dangerous demagogues to seed discord in our nations.

Initiatives like a Universal Basic Income sound promising. Let us stop the redistribution profiteers from killing these. 

The Universal Basic Income has nothing to do with the Right or the Left; it has all to do with the Radical Middle.

The Universal Basic Income is a citizen to citizen initiative... it must keep out the populists and the demagogues wanting to profit on the redistribution.

PS. I come from Venezuela a nation that in 2005-2015 received incredible amounts of net oil revenues. During that decade the poorest 40 percent of its people, from a government that identified itself as 21st Century Socialism, did not get even 15 percent of what should have been their per capita share of that income. I have fought a lot for the distribution to the citizens of the oil revenues. Unfortunately, until now, the redistribution profiteers have had the day.