Stiglitz: Anger Over ‘Failed Economy’ is Shaping US Election
(COMMON DREAMS) Nadia Prupis, March 6, 2016 Inequality is shaping the 2016 — U.S. presidential election, as voters disillusioned by the financial crisis and Wall Street greed increasingly turn to populist candidates like Bernie Sanders, who has made economic inequality a central platform of his campaign, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stieglitz said on Wednesday.
“There are a lot of people that are described as angry and they finally figured out that they’re not doing very well,” Bloomberg reports Stiglitz as saying during an event at the Resolution Foundation, a London-based research group. “They’re not doing as well as their parents; some Americans aren’t doing as well as their grandparents.”
“Americans have seen lots of injustices—people were thrown out of their houses that didn’t owe money, and none of the bankers were held accountable” for their roles in the financial crisis, Stiglitz said. “I think that really has motivated the anger across the spectrum.”