Remora
I'm a little sick today. Sore throat, feverish, and all day I've been trying and failing to complete a review that I should have done, I really should have done as a good person and upright citizen, two weeks ago. I'm having trouble framing it -- I'm having trouble restraining myself from inelegantly ladling the tons of research I did, all the things I found out about the Ottoman empire, about Persian miniaturists, and about Vasari, all over the thing (some more gravy, dear?).
Also, Johanna, who I thought was coming to visit from Denmark, e-mailed me that it's a no-go.

So, you're expecting the same old same old rant about the war. But no - no, today the Nobel Prize went to three economists, one of whom, Joseph Stiglitz, is rather famous. He's famous for having resigned from the World Bank as a dissenter from the World Bank IMF approach to global economic policy. He is, by a fluke of history, on the side of the kids, or some of the kids, in the anti-WTO rank and file. So of course I'm happy for about the prize. The prize usually goes to prize stinkers -- it is has become a smoke signal from the Swedish upper class that they want lower taxes and the luxuries of other of the world's upper classes. But lately they have taken out their teeth, voting squishy -- last year for Sen, now for Stiglitz. Who knows, maybe Galbraith (fils) has a chance.
I wonder how the Times is going to handle old Stiglitz getting the prize. Seeing how they have a faith in neo-liberalism much bigger than a mustard seed -- in fact, so big they have no room for any other dissenting opinion.
On Stiglitz, well, you have to read his piece,

WHAT I LEARNED AT THE WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS.
The Insider
by Joseph Stiglitz

Two really really nice grafs -- but read the article:

"The IMF likes to go about its business without outsiders asking too many questions. In theory, the fund supports democratic institutions in the nations it assists. In practice, it undermines the democratic process by imposing policies. Officially, of course, the IMF doesn't "impose" anything. It "negotiates" the conditions for receiving aid. But all the power in the negotiations is on one side--the IMF's--and the fund rarely allows sufficient time for broad consensus-building or even widespread consultations with either parliaments or civil society. Sometimes the IMF dispenses with the pretense of openness altogether and negotiates secret covenants.

"When the IMF decides to assist a country, it dispatches a "mission" of economists. These economists frequently lack extensive experience in the country; they are more likely to have firsthand knowledge of its five-star hotels than of the villages that dot its countryside. They work hard, poring over numbers deep into the night. But their task is impossible. ... The mathematical models the IMF uses are frequently flawed or out-of-date. Critics accuse the institution of taking a cookie-cutter approach to economics, and they're right. Country teams have been known to compose draft reports before visiting. I heard stories of one unfortunate incident when team members copied large parts of the text for one country's report and transferred them wholesale to another. They might have gotten away with it, except the "search and replace" function on the word processor didn't work properly, leaving the original country's name in a few places. Oops."

I shouldn't give the impression Stiglitz is a radical. He has the same fondness for trade agreements of most mainstream economists. He thinks NAFTA is nifty. I don't. But he actually has a sense that economics is embodied in the Lebenswelt, a truly unusual perspective. Most economists have a way of thinking of culture, of manners, of extra-economic values, as being so much dead zone, a set of collateral and irrelevant information. It is the singing of the numbers they sit and listen to, those siren models.

Also on the World Bank contretemps, this article from Salon.