Last Wednesday, the Occupy movement gained a little more intellectual momentum when eight faculty members from Harvard, Boston College, and N.Y.U. gathered in Cambridge to present a daylong Teach-In. In one talk, Archon Fung (Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship and Co-Director of Transparency Policy Project at Harvard) took a vague thesis of the Occupy movement — “Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit” — and gave it some academic depth in a data-filled talk called “Why Has Inequality Grown in America? And What Should We Do About It?” The other talks are available on YouTube (see links below) or via audio stream:

Heterodox Economics: Alternatives to Mankiw’s Ideology - Stephen Marglin, Walter Barker Professor of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

Wall Streetʼs Role in the European Financial Crisis - Richard Parker, Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The Occupy Movement and Student Debt Refusal - Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

Economics for the 99% – Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College

Booms and Busts: The Legal Dynamics of Modern Money - Christine Desan, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Harvard University

Fear and Power - Brad Epps, Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures and Department Chair for Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

Vigilance, Inquiry, Alienation & Hope at Harvard and in the USA - John Womack, Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

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Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston

Harvard Thinks Big, a TED-Esque Event

Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lectures from Occupy Harvard Teach-In Provide Answers is a post from: Open Culture

David Harvey, an important social theorist and geographer, has got the right idea. Take what you know. Teach it in the classroom. Capture it on video. Then distribute it to the world. Keep it simple, but just do it.

Harvey is now making available 26 hours of lectures, during which he gives a close reading of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867). This work, often considered to be Marx’s masterpiece, is where he elaborated a critique of capitalism and laid the groundwork for an ideology that took the 20th century by storm. Harvey is no stranger to this text. He has taught this class for over 40 years now, both in universities (Johns Hopkins and CUNY) and in the community as well.

The first lecture, preceded by an introductory interview lasting roughly six minutes, appears above. The rest of the lectures can be accessed via Harvey’s web site, YouTube, and iTunes. Also, we have placed the course in our collection of Free Online Courses, which keeps on growing. Find it under the Economics section.

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The Crisis of Capitalism Animated (with David Harvey)

Hayek v. Keynes Rap

Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (Free Course) is a post from: Open Culture

Back in 2008, Annie Leonard produced The Story of Stuff (see below), a 20-minute animated film that explores the way our consumerist habits take a toll on the environment and sustainability. The video racked up millions of views on YouTube, and now Leonard returns with the second video in a longer series. It’s called the The Story of Broke (see above) and it takes a shorter, animated look at U.S. government spending — at how we prioritize our spending, and what it says about our core national values.

We have a lot of money floating around. The federal government collected $2.16 trillion in tax revenue in FY 2010 (and we borrowed yet another $1.3 trillion more). Meanwhile, roughly $705 billion went to defense spending, which is seven times (or $589 billion) more than the next biggest defense spender, China. It turns out that operating a bloated empire with troops deployed across 150 countries is a costly national priority. Then, as Leonard points out, we also unthinkingly funnel a lot of money, in the form of subsidies and giveaways, to dinosaur industries. And then we’re told that nothing is left over for Social Security ($707 billion), Medicare/Medicaid ($732 billion), and education. But we shouldn’t take those claims at face value. Where we spend money is a choice. It’s ideally our choice, but all too often it’s really a matter of what’s valued by our leaders and their financial backers….

The Story of Broke: An Animated Look at US Federal Spending and Values is a post from: Open Culture

Don’t blame the lamestream media for this one. When it comes to our protracted economic stagnation, there is ultimately one place to point the finger: It’s those pesky mainstream economists.

That’s the tongue-in-cheek conclusion of Niall Ferguson, history professor at Harvard and author of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. Ferguson makes his point in the first installment of a new animated series of “Op-Vids” from The Daily Beast. “What is an Op-Vid,” writes The Daily Beast on Vimeo? “Opinion, without the pundits yelling. Handmade animation, without the caricatures. Essays without the text. Complex topics, without the boring.” Without the boring what? Complexity?

Ferguson makes some curious claims. He admits that stimulus spending has worked up to a point: It helped avoid another Great Depression. But it didn’t create a sustained recovery. Why? Because there wasn’t enough of it? No. Because it leaks. In a global economy, Ferguson argues, you would need chaos theory to understand where the stimulus actually ends up. Even more curiously, Ferguson argues that rising income inequality in America “limits the effectiveness of Keynesian policies, because they need average households to boost their spending.” (So you can forget about hiring teachers, firefighters or construction workers; that wouldn’t help “average” households spend more.)

Having thus destroyed Keynesianism, Ferguson moves on to offer a solution: Simplify the tax code. Never mind the shortfall in aggregate demand for goods and services. Never mind that corporations–sitting on $2 trillion in uninvested cash reserves–have responded to that shortfall by cutting production and laying off workers. Simplify the tax code, says Ferguson, and American companies will hire more American workers. Problem solved.

As a footnote, it’s worth pointing out that in early 2009 Ferguson was involved in a very public debate with Princeton economist Paul Krugman over the effectiveness of fiscal expansion. Ferguson argued that government borrowing would damage the economy by driving up interest rates. Nearly three years later, interest rates have remained very low. Looking back on the debate, Krugman said of Ferguson, “He doesn’t understand Macroeconomics 101.”

It’s the Tax Code, Stupid: Niall Ferguson Solves Our Economic Mess is a post from: Open Culture

Joseph Stiglitz teaches at the Columbia Business School and Columbia’s Department of Economics and, of course, won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001.

The money quote from his appearance had less to do with economics per se and more with democracy: “We have too many regulations stopping democracy, and not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving.” No bullhorns, are you serious?

You probably know Lawrence Lessig because of his work founding Creative Commons and promoting “Free Culture.” (Watch his final speech on Free Culture here.) Several years ago, Lessig moved from Stanford to Harvard, where he took up a new focus — government corruption. That’s what he grapples with in his new book, Republic, Lost and this related video. Given Lessig’s focus on how corporate money corrupts our political system, it’s not surprising that he would have something to say about the potential of the Wall Street protests.

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Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occupy Wall Street

Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig at Occupy Wall Street is a post from: Open Culture

Doc Zone, a documentary series produced by CBC Television, is now airing, Meltdown, a four part investigation into the great financial debacle of 2008. Along the way, the CBC’s Terence McKenna takes viewers “behind the headlines and into the backrooms at the highest levels of world governments and banking institutions, revealing the astonishing level of backstabbing and tension behind the scenes as the world came dangerously close to another Great Depression.”

Above, we have posted the first episode called “The Men Who Crashed the World.” The remaining programs can be watched by clicking here and scrolling down the page. Or by heading to Al Jazeera’s English site, which also hosts the four-part series. Thanks to William for sending along this film. It’s now added to the Documentary section of our collection of Free Movies Online.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and we’ll keep pointing you to free cultural goodies daily…

Meltdown: The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse is a post from: Open Culture

We’re tackling another big question today with the help of Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson. And the question goes like this: Why has the West created so much prosperity and stability over the past several centuries, when the rest of the world did not? For Ferguson, the “great divergence” can be explained by six big ideas, or what he calls killer apps for the benefit of his technophile TED audience:

1. Competition
2. The Scientific Revolution
3. Property Rights
4. Modern Medicine
5. The Consumer Society
6. Work Ethic

These apps, it turns out, are open source. Anyone can download and use them. And that’s precisely what Asia has done. The great divergence is over (baby blue)…

Six Ideas That Set the West Apart from the Rest (And Why It’s All Over Now Baby Blue) is a post from: Open Culture

In March 2000, Yale economist Robert Shiller published Irrational Exuberance, a book that warned that the long-running bull market was a bubble. Weeks later, the market cracked and Shiller was the new guru. Fast forward a few years, and Shiller released a second edition of the same book, this time arguing that the housing market was the latest and greatest bubble. We all know how that prediction played out.

Unlike most of the financial industry, Shiller isn’t locked into a perennially bullish view, bent on pumping the market despite what the real numbers suggest. And that should give students, whether young or old, some confidence in his free course simply called “Financial Markets.” Available on the web in multiple formats (YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video - Yale Web Site), the 26 lecture-course covers the inner-workings of financial institutions that ideally “support people in their productive ventures” and help them manage economic risks. You can start with Lecture 1 here. Above, we present his introductory lecture on Stocks.

Finally (and separately) you can get Shiller’s thoughts on how to handle America’s big debt mess here. It was recorded in recent days.

Shiller’s course appears in the Economics section of our big collection of Free Online Courses. 385 courses in total. Don’t miss them.

Financial Markets Course with Yale Sage Robert Shiller is a post from: Open Culture

Al Jazeera forced many Westerns viewers to take their reporting seriously during the Egyptian uprising this spring, and now the Qatar-based news network has released a timely reportage (Aug. 2) on the fault lines in America — on the gap between rich and poor that only grew wider this week. Alexis de Tocqueville they’re not. There’s no subtle sociology here. But, at the same time, I suspect that this foreign perspective on the U.S. won’t appear unfamiliar to many Americans. The program runs 24 minutes, and other shows in the Fault Lines series can be viewed on YouTube here. H/T @courosa

Al Jazeera: The Top 1% in America is a post from: Open Culture

Last month, China hit another major milestone. It passed Japan and became the second largest economy in the world, leaving only the US in its way. Give China a decade, maybe a little more, and it will inevitably surge into the lead. That’s the accepted narrative.

But then we come across this: the possibility that a mounting real estate bubble might derail China’s plans. This report from Australian public television gives you a disturbing look at how the Chinese government has pumped vast amounts of capital into fixed assets, like commercial and residential real estate, to keep the country’s economy growing. And what they’re left with is what James Chanos (a hedge fund manager) has famously described as “Dubai times one thousand.” Right now, there are an estimated 64 million empty apartments in China, and approximately 30 billion square feet of commercial real estate under construction — equivalent to a five-by-five foot office cubicle for every man, woman and child in China. It’s one thing to read these facts, another thing to see what it all looks like. And that’s the opportunity you get above.

For a more precise roadmap of what a Chinese crash might look like, you should spend some time with this piece in Canadian Business magazine.

Bubble Watch: Is China Next? is a post from: Open Culture