Myanmar's Generals Grow Rich

Joseph Stiglitz, the American Nobel economics laureate, advised Myanmar's military-run regime this week that political reform is necessary if the generals hope to revitalize the country's stagnant, mostly agriculture-based economy. Any reform of the rural sector, which employs 70% of the workforce and accounts for nearly half of gross domestic product (GDP), will run up against the widespread and largely institutionalized corruption of the military.

Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank and Nobel Prize winner in 2001, is renowned for his sharp critiques of conventional free-market development policies, including those espoused by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.