I interviewed the Nobel Prize-winning economist, who spoke about his rival, the non-Nobel Prize-winning economist (among numerous other topics).

Here’s a part Harvardians may find especially interesting (questions in bold):

In criticizing the economic policies of Alan Greenspan, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers back in the 1990s, you were fighting “the committee to save the world,” as Time famously described them. Is this round two?

It’s the same set of battles. It was about their conception of how the global market economy worked. It was their conception of the nature of the market economy. The intensity of some of the battles I had with these guys was quite strong.

For example?

As Russia was approaching its [financial] crisis in 1998, the Russians asked me to give them some advice on what to do. Summers didn’t want me to go. So he called Rubin, who ordered [World Bank president James] Wolfensohn to order me not to go. In the end I had to get Boris Yeltsin to say he wanted me to come. That trumped Rubin, and I went.

This kind of thing happened over and over again

What was Summers afraid of?

You could say that he was afraid that his ideas would not win out in an open marketplace of debate. Maybe he was aware of the intellectual incoherence of his views and the extent to which they were really special interest pleadings of the financial markets.

Stiglitz is a fascinating guy, and if you’re interested in his views on politics and the economy, read the full interview.