In the book The Great Deception, the global economic policy is described with courage, honesty, as well as depth and insight, by an exceptional connoisseur of the subject.

The renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz spent seven years in Washington, serving as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and as chief economist of the World Bank. Particularly concerned about the plight of developing nations, he increasingly became disillusioned as he witnessed the International Monetary Fund and other major institutions placing the interests of Wall Street and the financial community above those of the poorer nations.

Stiglitz closely observed most of the major economic events of the past decade, including the Asian financial crisis and the transition of former Soviet economies, as well as the management of development programs around the world. He saw policymakers clinging to outdated economic models and using the doctrines of the "Washington Consensus," which were based on these models, to design policies that had catastrophic results.

He also discovered within the major institutions of globalization a detrimental tendency towards secrecy, which makes mistakes even more severe and simultaneously hinders positive change.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]