Joseph E. Stiglitz Testifies Before the Senate Budget Committee on “Making Wall Street Pay Its Fair Share”
June 12, 2024. United States Senate.
During a hearing titled “Making Wall Street Pay Its Fair Share: Raising Revenue, Strengthening Our Economy,” Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University; IPD) delivered a ten-point plan for reforming the tax system so that it would be more equitable, generate more revenue, and promote more growth. The first proposal is to remove the tax advantage for capital gains over other forms of income. Another proposed reform implements a minimum income tax, similar to President Biden’s proposed “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax,” and another increases the minimum corporate tax. The full testimony and list of proposals can be found here.
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Conference at the Vatican: Addressing the Debt Crisis in the Global South
June 5, 2024. Casina Pio IV, Vatican City. Hosted by The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD).
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Leading academic experts, high-level policymakers, officials from multilateral institutions, and religious leaders met at the Vatican to discuss the problem of sovereign debt and potential reforms that would both mitigate existing debt burdens and make the recurrence of another global debt crisis less likely.
Pope Francis’s priorities for the Church’s Jubilee Year of 2025 include asking creditors to provide debt relief in countries that bear unsustainable debts.
Pope Francis granted participants of the IPD/PASS Conference an audience, during which he delivered remarks calling for the creation of a new international framework to resolve the sovereign debt crisis that is affecting millions of people across the Global South:
“In the wake of mismanaged globalization, the pandemic and wars, we find ourselves faced with a debt crisis that mainly affects the countries of the global South, causing misery and distress, and depriving millions of people of the possibility of a dignified future. Consequently, no government can morally require that its people suffer deprivations incompatible with human dignity.
In order to break the debt-financing cycle, it is necessary to create a multinational mechanism, based on solidarity and harmony among peoples, that takes into account the global nature of the problem and its economic, financial and social implications. The absence of such a mechanism favors the mentality of ‘every person for himself or herself,’ where the weakest always lose… Let us think of a new international financial architecture that is bold and creative.”
The full text of Pope Francis’s speech is here.
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Pope Francis greets Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz.
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Pope Francis delivers remarks calling for a new international framework for sovereign debt.
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Pope Francis greets Martín Guzmán.
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Following the Papal Audience, participants attended sessions to discuss the debt crisis in the Global South; fairness and efficiency in debt restructurings; international and domestic reforms to reduce the frequency, duration, and costs of sovereign debt crises.
Lead speakers on debt distress included Antoinette Sayeh, Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund; Brad Setser, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; Markus Brunnermeier, Princeton University.
Martín Guzmán (Columbia University, SIPA; IPD) chaired a session on fairness and efficiency in debt restructurings. Among the lead speakers were Jay Shambaugh, Under Secretary for International Affairs, U.S. Treasury Department; Emmanuel Moulin, Chief of Staff, Office of the Prime Minister of France; Joseph E. Stiglitz; Vera Songwe, Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Africa Growth Initiative, Brookings Institute; H.E. Albert Muchanga, Commissioner for Economic Development, Commissioner for Trade and Industry, African Union Commission.
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Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, Chancellor of PASS, and Sister Helen Alford, President of PASS.
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Participants at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at Casino Pio IV in Vatican City.
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Nadia Calviño, President of the European Investment Bank, and Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, PASS Academician
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During a discussion on addressing incentive structures in debt restructuring, lead speakers included Fernando Haddad, Minister of Finance, Brazil; Carlos Cuerpo, Minister for Economy, Trade and Business, Spain; Jin Liqun, President and Chair of the Board of Directors, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; Nadia Calviño, President, European Investment Bank; Mahmoud Mohieldin, Executive Director for the Arab States and the Maldives, International Monetary Fund; Lee Buchheit, Honorary Professor, University of Edinburgh Law School.
This conference is part of an ongoing IPD sovereign debt program that is led by Martín Guzmán and focused on increasing understanding of sovereign debt and advocating for policy reforms. The concept note with a full agenda and list of speakers for the conference can be found here.
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Interdisciplinary Sovereign Debt and Research and Management Conference (DebtCon7)
May 29-31. Banque of France, Paris. Hosted by The Finance for Development Lab and the Paris School of Economics.
Since its first meeting at Georgetown in 2015, the DebtCon conference has convened law and social science scholars, and representatives from civil society and the public and private sectors to discuss creative solutions for urgent debt policy challenges. During this year’s conference, Martín Guzmán participated in a panel, “Solvency and liquidity at high nominal rates,” with Elena Duggar, Moody’s Chief Credit Officer for the Americas; Jose Antonia Anaya, former Minister of Finance of Mexico; Ernest Addison, Governor of the Central Bank of Ghana; Hélène Rey, London Business School.
Panelists discussed how fiscal and monetary policies interact after the unprecedented rise in nominal interest rates and their consequences for debt sustainability. They discussed the importance of issuing debt in a country’s own currency to promote debt sustainability.
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