Economic Crisis and Globalization

in Current Affairs, Economics | May 25th, 2010

The news isn’t good. The Euro is los­ing val­ue dai­ly. Coun­tries are slip­ping into “sov­er­eign debt crises” – mean­ing they’re going broke. And the mar­kets are swoon­ing once again. We’re watch­ing the prover­bial oth­er shoe drop.

Through­out this cri­sis, many Amer­i­cans have direct­ed their anger at Wall Street (and deserved­ly so). But few have won­dered whether there’s any­thing basi­cal­ly wrong with Amer­i­can-style cap­i­tal­ism. And, if any­thing, the only orga­nized protest move­ment (The Tea Par­ty) has assert­ed that we need more cap­i­tal­ism in our lives, not less.

In some rare quar­ters of acad­eme, cap­i­tal­ism still does­n’t get off so easy. And that brings us to three new online cours­es taught by the econ­o­mist Richard D. Wolff at The New School in NYC. Above, we fea­ture the first lec­ture from Eco­nom­ic Cri­sis and Glob­al­iza­tion, a course that takes a less ortho­dox view of how we’re man­ag­ing the Great Reces­sion. (Find the oth­er sev­en lec­tures here.) His oth­er cours­es, both on Marx­i­an eco­nom­ics, appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es under Eco­nom­ics.

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Where Is Technology Taking Us?

in Economics, Web/Tech | March 4th, 2010

A recent Front­line doc­u­men­tary, Dig­i­tal Nation: A Life on the Vir­tu­al Fron­tier, asks just this question–particularly with regard to edu­ca­tion. Sub­jects include atten­tion span, mul­ti-task­ing, and the doubts of one-time tech­nol­o­gy evan­ge­list Dou­glas Rushkoff. But while some see tech­nol­o­gy as an obsta­cle to clear think­ing and human inter­ac­tion, oth­ers see it as essen­tial to con­tem­po­rary edu­ca­tion.

I have to say the whole sub­ject res­onates with my own ambiva­lent technophil­ia. You can watch the doc­u­men­tary above or here (and the trail­er fol­lows), but don’t for­get to check your news feeds, twit­ter, and face­book while it’s on in the back­ground.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

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Loudon Wainwright III Sings “The Krugman Blues”

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | February 22nd, 2010

Loudon Wain­wright III has released a new album, Songs for the New Depres­sion, that fit­ting­ly fea­tures “The Krug­man Blues,” an homage to the Prince­ton, Nobel Prize-win­ning econ­o­mist, Paul Krug­man, who has doc­u­ment­ed Amer­i­ca’s eco­nom­ic spi­ral in The New York Times. You can watch the Krug­man Blues above, and get the full album at Wain­wright’s web site.

via The New York­er

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Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

in Economics | January 27th, 2010

Russ Roberts, the George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist and host of Econ­Talk (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) recent­ly teamed up with John Pap­o­la, a tele­vi­sion exec, to pro­duce “Fear the Boom and Bust.” It’s a rap song/video with intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance that fol­lows this premise:

John May­nard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great econ­o­mists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, come back to life to attend an eco­nom­ics con­fer­ence on the eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Before the con­fer­ence begins, and at the insis­tence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a boom and bust cycle in mod­ern economies and good rea­son to fear it.

This clip is now added to our YouTube favorites. You can get the full lyrics, sto­ry and free down­load of the song in high qual­i­ty MP3 and AAC files at: https://www.econstories.tv

via the always great Plan­et Mon­ey Pod­cast

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Peter Singer on Greed & Wall Street Excesses

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | January 18th, 2010

Peter Singer, an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton, cre­at­ed the ani­mal rights move­ment back in the 1970s, and, more recent­ly, launched a cam­paign to end world pover­ty. One can’t con­tem­plate pover­ty with­out also con­sid­er­ing greed, and that brings us to the clip above. Inter­viewed in 2009, Singer sug­gests that greed dri­ves us bio­log­i­cal­ly (as does social col­lab­o­ra­tion for­tu­nate­ly). Greed helps us sur­vive and inno­vate. But there is also a point where it becomes point­less and patho­log­i­cal, and that’s what we have wit­nessed in the finan­cial world. Greed brought us Bernie Mad­off. But it has also brought us (my infer­ences) bankers who cre­ate a cat­a­stro­phe one year and take record bonus­es the next. And it has brought us to the point where  our coun­try has dan­ger­ous­ly slipped off of its demo­c­ra­t­ic moor­ings. Lloyd Blank­fein, this clip is for you. Thanks Ted for send­ing this one along.

Look­ing for free phi­los­o­phy cours­es? Vis­it the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our Free Course col­lec­tion.

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Paul Samuelson: How I Became an Economist

in Economics | December 14th, 2009

Paul Samuel­son, Amer­i­ca’s first Nobel lau­re­ate in eco­nom­ics, died this week­end at age 94. In 2003, Samuel­son wrote a short essay called How I Became an Econ­o­mist.  What caught my eye is the last line: “Always, I have been over­paid to do what has been pure fun.” We should all be lucky enough to achieve that.

To give you a bet­ter feel for Samuel­son’s con­tri­bu­tions to eco­nom­ics, I have includ­ed an NPR inter­view with Paul Krug­man, anoth­er Amer­i­can recip­i­ent of the Nobel Prize in eco­nom­ics. You can lis­ten below.

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Behavioral Economics and Underwater Mortgages

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | December 3rd, 2009

What if peo­ple behaved like banks? Or, more pre­cise­ly, what if indi­vid­u­als hold­ing “under­wa­ter” mort­gages stopped fol­low­ing the social norms of ‘per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty’ and ‘promise-keep­ing’ and instead act­ed like cap­i­tal­ist play­ers in a free mar­ket? Most would dump their sink­ing mort­gages and walk away. That’s the find­ing of Brent White, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, who has pub­lished a new paper called “Under­wa­ter and Not Walk­ing Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Man­age­ment of the Hous­ing Cri­sis.” (PDF) The bot­tom line is that home­own­ers and banks play by two dif­fer­ent sets of rules. Main Street accepts the “emo­tion­al con­straints … active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed by the gov­ern­ment, the finan­cial indus­try,” and they hold the bag. Wall Street acts in its own self inter­est and gets a fresh start. The only thing they have in com­mon these days are (you guessed it) guns.

Just for the record: I’m not advo­cat­ing a posi­tion here, and I don’t hold an under­wa­ter mort­gage…

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The End of Wall Street?: Michael Lewis

in Current Affairs, Economics | September 17th, 2009

Here we are. One year after the fall of Lehman Broth­ers. And here we have Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Pok­er, talk­ing about his next book — The Big Short: Inside the Dooms­day Machine (2010) — that looks at those peo­ple who actu­al­ly under­stood that Wall Street was going to blow up. Most of the bank­ing com­mu­ni­ty did­n’t see it com­ing. (Hap­py anniver­sary Dick Fuld.) But a hand­ful saw the writ­ing on the wall and took the big short bet. You can get Lewis’ com­plete talk here.

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