Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, is one of the world’s most influential thinkers in the battle against economic inequality. He’s trying hard to remain optimistic. But it ain’t easy.

Michael Hirsh has a question: where is Joseph Stiglitz? Well, he's in Brazil or something, but where is he in the Obama administration? The liberal Nobel-winning economist, who will be forever in our hearts for the animosity between him and Larry Summers, was right about basically everything, of course, and the Obama administration hasn't even called him, going with Tim Geithner and Summers instead. Now all the whiny liberals are whining about how there are no liberals in the Obama cabinet!