Marcellus Andrews - Marcellus Andrews teaches economics at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York. Andrews earned a BSBA from the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania as well as an MA, MPhil and PhD in economics from Yale University. Andrews comments on public affairs and economics in the pages of The Nation and on National Public Radio's business affairs journal Marketplace. His current book projects include Economic Policy and the Road to Social Justice (completed manuscript), Re-imagining American Freedom (in progress) and Striver's Manifesto: On the Economics and Ethics of Black Achievement (in progress).
Marshall Auerback - Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. He lives in Denver, Colorado, and is a frequent contributor to the blog "Credit Writedowns".
Pierre Calame - Pierre Calame is the Director General of The Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress, which finances, through donations or loans, research and initiatives that contribute in a significant and innovative way to the progress of humankind through science and social development.
James K. Galbraith - James K. Galbraith teaches economics and a variety of other subjects at University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs. He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale.
Galbraith studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge in 1974-1975, and then served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1985. He directed the LBJ School's Ph.D. Program in Public Policy from 1995 to 1997. He directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group based at the LBJ School.
Galbraith has co-authored two textbooks, The Economic Problem with the late Robert L. Heilbroner and Macroeconomics with William Darity, Jr. He is the author of Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future and Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay. His latest book The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too was published in 2008.
Galbraith serves as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and as Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. He writes a column called "Econoclast" for Mother Jones, and occasional commentary in many other publications, including The Texas Observer, The American Prospect, and The Nation. He is an occasional commentator for Public Radio International's Marketplace.
Joseph E. Stiglitz - Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank until January 2000. Before that he was the chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. He is currently a finance and economics professor at Columbia University. He is the author of Globalization and Its Discontents and The Roaring Nineties.
James K. Galbraith discusses the history leading up to the recent economic collapse, and suggests how the American government can get back on its feet.
Then, a panel of leading experts headed by Joseph Stiglitz tackles the issue, and discuss the challenges facing the Obama administration in managing the financial crisis.
They argue that its implications run well beyond the US economy to concerns about international security.
Any rendering of the economic crisis that makes no mention of the government intervention in the lending markets which first resulted in the explosion of the sub prime market and then failed to provide adequate oversight of the sub prime cookie devouring monsters Fannie and Freddie is mostly an exercise in politicized hackery.
Stiglitz is a great thinker. But he does himself a disservice in trying to construct a narrative of economic crisis more in alignment with his political loyalties than with his awareness of economic realities.
Economic policies are as political as anything else. I can only guess some people are on the other side of the political chessboard. I don't know what Stoiglitz political loyalties are,and I really don't care about that. Whay I know without knowing anything about economics is that it is not fair to bail out the big capitalists without bailing out the workers. It's been a bloody exercise to bail out the auto industry, and some Cuban Cobgresswoman said wages of workers should be lower, but not a single word about big money taken away by the management. In contrast, big financial businesses were bailed out smoothly and with no so much noise. Could this person tell me somthing which does not have political loyalties to the big financial capital.
implies the retrofitting of the democratic mechanisms by which we set the mandates, goals and constraints under which capitalist institutions operate. We need a more democratic organic capitalism, that is to say a much more distributive participation in capital ownership and capital management. A more creative form of capitalism that does not equate to concentration of wealth, power, education and control.
Political-Economy is an instance of an Organic Living System.
Capitalism as presently formulated has failed to evolve basic monetary, credit and accounting mechanisms capable of creating, maintaining and enforcing the organically mandatory equilibrium between PRODUCTION POWER & PURCHASING POWER. Translation:
The issue for capitalism is not that concentrations of wealth are amoral but that concentrations of wealth are mathematically unsustainable under the organic-dynamics(network mathematics) endemic to the financing cycles of any flavor of political economy even Capitalism. I smell eau'd Carl Max all over this one. Not that he would have visualized it these terms.
The question arises , can capitalism be retrofitted to map onto an organic skeleton that maintains a high distribution of wealth, power, education and control. Although this sounds like a tough challenge, I think that capitalism has a much better shot at this than any other form of political-economy. After all at the root of capitalism is self interest and self interest is the penny in the currency of human affairs. A clever matrix of organic checks and balances could do the trick?
Great site get to see the other side of discussions from the Well to do...I'm still angry about the bank bailouts that happened. Nice as they bring in the topics of carbon and going green
