BRIC Should Come Together to Form a Global Fund: Stiglitz

Monday, 16 January 2012, 16:21 IST
Printer Print Email Email

Kolkata: Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz feels the rising BRIC economies should come together and form a global fund for more accessibility of the developing nations.

"I am a very strong supporter of the emerging markets and creating a new international fund. The fact is that money is with the emerging markets. The economies of the BRIC are larger than the industrial countries that formed World Bank in 1944. The emerging economies, the BRIC need to come together to form a global institution," said Stiglitz while addressing a programme here.

BRIC is an acronym used to refer to the nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Stiglitz said the growing inequality and the instability of the economy has triggered the "Occupy Wall Street Movement".

"There has been a trend that money is going from poor countries to rich countries, which is just vice versa... the money should flow from rich to the poor," he said.

"Markets and globalistaion are not working the way they are supposed to. Demand is supposed to equal supply, including in the labour market, but we have millions without jobs, and a vast under-utilisation of resources - in a world with vast unmet needs, to fight poverty, to promote development, to retrofit the global economy for global warming," he said.

Stiglitz, a professor of the Columbia University, said everyone was supposed to benefit from the prosperity that markets and globalisation brought, but unfortunately that has not been the case.

"The IMF (International Monetary Fund) now has a new view that inequalities lead to instability. As their purpose is to bring economic stability, they have to address the problem of inequality. I think that is a major change," he said.

"The protests have shown the failure of our markets, injustice of our system and hope that we will be able to remove the inequalities in both developing and developed world to have a more sustainable and more democratic economic growth," Stiglitz said.


Source: IANS