Nobel Prize--winning economist Joseph Stiglitz talks about his new treatise, *Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy*, in conversation with writer and editor Cullen Murphy. Although the current financial crisis is global in reach, it has its roots in the mismanagement, on multiple levels, of the American economy. In *Freefall*, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Drawing on his academic expertise, his years spent shaping policy in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, and his more recent role as head of a UN commission charged with reforming the global financial system, Stiglitz outlines a way forward building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government, addressing the inequalities of the global financial system, and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists.