In an era of global economic turmoil, policymakers and ordinary citizens around the world are turning to the writings of Professor Joseph Stiglitz. Virtually alone among economic oracles, Stiglitz predicted as early as 2006 that the bubble in U.S. home prices would lead to a credit crisis and global recession. Stiglitz has held professorships at Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Oxford and is now University Professor at Columbia. He served in President Clinton's cabinet and as Chief Economist to the World Bank, a post he resigned after dissenting from the bank's policies in developing countries. Stiglitz received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics for his revolutionary analysis of the role "asymmetric information" plays in market behavior. He pioneered the field of "information economics" which offers new approaches to problems ranging from unemployment to international development and climate change. His prescient ideas have won a vast international following through books such as the bestseller Globalization and Its Discontents.