Dear Editor,
On this day in 2009, Lucky Mulusa and I attended a presentation by Professor Joseph Stiglitz, an Ameri- can economist, public pol- icy analyst, a professor at Columbia University, and a recipient of Nobel Memo- rial Prize in Economic Sci- ences in 2001.
Prof Stiglitz made the pre- sentation at the University of Witwatersrand ( Wits). In his presentation, the Nobel Prize winning economist, argued that universities need to play a role in pre- venting financial crises.
Both economists and fi- nanciers argue strongly that universities need to teach their students how to avoid the mistakes their prede- cessors made.
Do our Zambian univer- sities really teach this to their students?
For the record, Prof Sti- glitz is a former senior Vice President and Chief Econ- omist of the World Bank. He is also a former mem- ber and chairman of the (US president’s) Council of Economic Advisers. He is known for his support of Georgist public finance the- ory, and for his critical view of the management of glo- balization, of laissez-faire economists whom he calls “free-market fundamen- talists”. He is a renowned critic of international insti- tutions such as the Interna- tional Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In the photo below, from left to right it is me, Prof Stiglitz, Lucky Mulusa, Pro- fessor Mthuli Ncube (the current Minister of Finance in Zimbabwe) , and one lec- turer at Wits University (the name, gone).
PETER SINKAMBA
TO SAVE THE ECONOMY, START WITH THE CLASSROOM – JOSEPH STIGLITZ
