World-renowned economist, Tsinghua honorary professor, and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz visited the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University on March 20, 2009. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York, shed light on the global financial crisis by discussing the circumstances that led to the collapse of American markets last September. Critical insight on the strategies employed by the Obama administration to address the crisis will not be entirely appropriate, Stiglitz argues, in large part because of a misallocation of capital and inadequate use of government policy tools to stimulate the economy. What is more, the challenges facing the financial sector call for a new system of global reserves to properly allocate capital particularly to developing countries. After the speech, Stiglitz took questions from students on subjects ranging from China's multi-billion dollar stimulus package to the shape the global economy might take in the second decade of the 21st century. His candid speech underscored Stiglitz' mastery of economics and provided students of economics, politics, and public policy insightful analysis on some of the biggest problems facing global finance today.