Speeches on inequality and on globalisation

Occasionally official financial institutions publish interesting though (metaphorically) dusty documents. Yesterday Ben Bernanke, the chairman of America’s Federal Reserve, gave a speech on economic well-being in America. It examined both absolute rises in wealth and widening inequality over the past three decades or so. The day before Prakash Loungani of the external relations department of the International Monetary Fund gave an address defending globalisation from a free market perspective. He drew on the work of Benjamin Friedman, Thomas Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz and Martin Wolf.