A WRITER AT LARGE: Hypocrisy and the IMF ; the International Monetary Fund Believes in Free Market Capitalism - but Only for the Developing World, Not for Rich Countries. Joseph Stiglitz, Former World Bank Vice-President and Nobel Laureate, Explains to JOHANN HARI Its Intellectual Incoherence and Moral Bankruptcy

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Picture a man who dedicates his life to warning the world about the humanitarian and environmental disasters that the International Monetary Fund leaves in its wake. You are, I'd wager, envisaging an earnest, sandal- wearing Green Party member, or a balaclava-wearing anarchist kicking in a McDonald's window. I'm pretty sure that you are not picturing a Nobel Prize-winning economist who was the chief economist and vice-president of the World Bank until three years ago.

Joseph Stiglitz is a very unlikely radical. He looks like a caricature of a Wicked Capitalist from a Bolshevik propaganda poster circa 1917. You know: the ones where a pig-like businessman rests his feet …