Joseph Stiglitz on Occupy and Why U.S.-Europe Austerity Will Only Weaken Economic Recovery

DemocracyNow.org - As European leaders scramble to address the sovereign debt crisis, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argues the austerity measures pushed by Germany, the United States and international creditors are only "going to make the countries weaker and weaker." If European economies contract, Stiglitz predicts that "our economy [will] go down further into the hole. ... Those policies then increase the probability of our weak economy tipping over into recession." Stiglitz's new book is "The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers our Future." Stigliz continues: "Occupy Wall Street was a reflection of a lot of American's perspective that our economic system is unfair. ... There was a hope after the crisis, that government would fix things, it didn't. Or didn't do enough, and that combination of economic unfairness and a political system that doesn't seem capable of correcting these injustices, I think is what motivated a lot of the Occupy Wall Street."

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