Confidence As In A Confidence Trick

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz lets it all hang out in a terrific new Vanity Fair article on Bush administration economic policymaking:

"The administration talked about confidence building, but what it delivered was actually a confidence trick. If the administration had really wanted to restore confidence in the financial system, it would have begun by addressing the underlying problems—the flawed incentive structures and the inadequate regulatory system.

"Was there any single decision which, had it been reversed, would have changed the course of history? Every decision -- including decisions not to do something, as many of our bad economic decisions have been -- is a consequence of prior decisions, an interlinked web stretching from the distant past into the future."

Photo illustration by Darrow for Vanity Fair