Joseph Stiglitz is a celebrated economist, a Nobel Prize winner in fact. You would expect his public pronouncements to evince deep reflection and logical consistency on economic matters. Nope. It reminds Dalrymple of an interview he conducted with South African communist Joe Slovo years ago:
I had expected him to be able to fend off my question with ease by means of some sophisticated rationalization, the exposure of whose untruth and bad faith would have taken more time than I had at my disposal. But no, he was just not very clever.