Joseph Stiglitz Hails New BRICS Bank Challenging U.S.-Dominated World Bank & IMF

A group of five countries have launched their own development bank to challenge the U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Leaders from the so-called BRICS countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- unveiled the New Development Bank at a summit in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza. The bank will be headquartered in Shanghai. Together, BRICS countries account for 25 percent of global GDP and 40 percent of the world's population. To discuss this development, we are joined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University and the World Bank's former chief economist. "It's very important in many ways," Stiglitz says of the New Development Bank's founding. "This is adding to the flow of money that will go to finance infrastructure, adaptation to climate change -- all the needs that are so evident in the poorest countries. It [also] reflects a fundamental change in global economic and political power. The BRICS countries today are richer than the advanced countries were when the World Bank and the IMF were founded. We're in a different world -- but the old institutions haven't kept up."