But if the writing is crisp, the arguments are a little soggy. Mr Stiglitz assumes the worst of markets, the best of governments--except, of course, his own. Too often, he wants to have it both ways: his distaste for the IMF has made him suspicious of all technocratic bodies, even to the point where he questions the case for independent central banks. But at the same time he wants to set up international tribunals to rule on unfair tax competition, for example, or health standards. He says that debt relief for the poorest countries is "simply a matter of accounting", because they could not repay anyway. But he also wants to argue that the burden of red ink has crippled them.

Despite his years in policy circles, he remains an artist of the impossible. Among his proposed solutions, he says that every country should open its markets to any economy that is both smaller and poorer. And any nation that does not impose a carbon tax to combat global warming should face tariffs from other countries that do. He argues that the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency gives America an exorbitant privilege--the ability to borrow heavily and cheaply from the rest of the world--and that Asia's determination to hoard dollars forces America to exploit this privilege. His proposal for "global greenbacks", an alternative reserve currency issued not by one country, but by international fiat, is inspired by Keynes's intriguing idea of an international clearing union. But if Keynes couldn't usher the idea into reality, Mr Stiglitz certainly can't.

"Making Globalisation Work" is not a bad book but it arrives after books that are better. Jagdish Bhagwati's arguments are more convincing ("In Defence of Globalisation"), Paul Blustein's reporting is more reliable ("And the Money Kept Rolling In and Out") and Martin Wolf provides a better guide to the economic research ("Why Globalisation Works"). That Mr Stiglitz, a great and original theorist, should spend his time writing a "me-too" globalisation book rather proves his point that markets sometimes misallocate resources.

http://economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SRSJJDP

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes