I find it difficult to summarise Stiglitz’s piece in Vanity Fair, May 2011, simply because I think that he makes his point so clearly, in as few words as possible, that I couldn’t put it any better: ”Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

Just read the full story, and enjoy it. It should be compulsory reading in schools and, above all, the old farts running the ultra-conservative cottage industry of disinformation (“I received this message from a well informed friend…”, “Here is REALLY vital news THEY don’t want you to to know” – preferably all in capitals and exclamation marks and, above all, very large type) should be spammed with it, until they learn it by heart. I am not sure they can or want to understand it, even if the language is very simple and straightforward, but Stiglitz, occasionally, uses words of more than one syllable and he can actually spell, too, which disqualifies him automatically as a rotten communist intellectual type. Perhaps somebody should make a cartoon version, for the Fox News audience.