Financial Crisis Audio: Recent Episodes
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Since 2007, nearly everyone has felt the dramatic effects of the global financial crisis. Developed economies are contracting, and emerging markets are facing slower growth rates. Unemployment is rising rapidly. The consequences of this disaster are far reaching and raise a host of questions about the causes and implications.
Economist Martin Wolf lays out the three enormous problems Europe faces today: relations with Russia; a possible Brexit; and the migration crisis. He goes on to analyze Europe's economic situation, declaring that the 2008 crash resulted in well over a lost decade, and the economic and political repercussions will be felt for many more years to come.
Why did the 2008 financial crisis occur? What should it teach us about modern economies and economics? Martin Wolf does a masterly job of untangling this complex catastrophe and proposes how we can avoid repeating our past mistakes.
"There can be no choice between doing well financially and behaving responsibly in business," declares Barclays Group Chief Executive Antony Jenkins. "The last half-dozen years make it obvious that you cannot have long-term success without behaving responsibly. This has to be integral to how you operate a company."
"By relying so heavily on things like GDP, unemployment, and the suite of statistics that grew up in their wake, we are using a really good 1950s set of tools designed to answer questions of global depression, World War II, and 1950s industrial nation-states that made stuff. We're really good at measuring that world, but we're not living in that world."
Alan S. Blinder, Princeton professor, "Wall Street Journal" columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, explains how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we can do from here.
How can you explain the European debt crisis so that ordinary Americans can understand--and what's more, care? Through interviews and story-telling techniques, these two NPR reporters show us that it's actually a long-drawn-out love story.
Does rising income inequality pose a threat to American democracy? This question has long been taboo in American politics. Yet as "Occupy Wall Street" spreads across the United States, the political consequences of income inequality are grabbing headlines as never before.
Why pretend that economics is value free? It's a product of our civilization and riddled with moral judgements, says Sedlacek. By separating economics from ethics we have created a zombie, a monster without a soul. The two have to be put back together.
Barry Eichengreen argues that while the dollar is bound to lose its singular status, the coming changes will be neither sudden nor dire.
Clyde Prestowitz argues that the U.S. is rapidly losing the basis of its wealth and power, as well as its freedom of action and independence. If we do not make dramatic changes quickly, we will confront a painful, permanent slide in our standard of living.
Raghuram Rajan traces the deepening fault lines in a world overly dependent on the indebted U.S. consumer to power global economic growth, and where the U.S. has growing inequality and a thin social safety net. If these flaws are not fixed, we should be prepared for an even more serious financial crisis.
We need to synthesize the idea that a free-market economy is a self-correcting mechanism and the Keynesian principle that capitalism needs some guidance, says UCLA economist Roger Farmer. The goal is to correct the excesses without stifling entrepreneurship and instituting central planning.
The market's failure was not simply a result of greed, mass myopia, or government failure, says John Cassidy, although these were all contributing factors. "I ultimately see this crisis as a crisis of ideas, and misapplied ideas."
Financial crises are not random events, say Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Looking at the the data on boom and bust cycles that have occurred over the past 800 years, a clear pattern emerges. Why can't we learn from history?
The spread of the financial crisis from a few developed countries to the entire global economy provides tangible evidence that the international trade and financial system needs to be profoundly reformed, says Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Columbia economist Jose Antonio Ocampo.
This Workshop for Ethics in Business panel analyzes the growing lack of trust in the financial system and how it threatens to keep the global economy in the doldrums. What are the ways to best restore that trust?
Economist Jeffrey Sachs focuses on the financial crisis, both in the U.S. and worldwide. He concludes that we should look at it as a wakeup call that we were not on a sustainable path, and as an opportunity to invest in the future.
While saving jobs is an urgent task in today's economy, promoting "Buy American" policies may hurt our chances of recovering from the recession. How can we apply the Golden Rule to our trade and consumption patterns?
How can we resolve the financial melt-down and prevent another? Solutions focus on free markets, regulation, or rewards. Perhaps we should balance all three? How?
What does the financial crisis imply? Should we liberalize trade on agriculture and services? Or should we protect domestic producers?
Does the symbiotic relationship between China and America--"Chimerica" as Niall Ferguson calls it--give reason to hope that America's present economic situation will turn out to be not a crash, but a correction?
Will our responses to the financial crisis be constructive, or will panic cloud our judgments?
For 30 years, the economic condition of most Americans has become ever more precarious. To change this requires a cogent ideology and politics of a managed, rather than laissez-faire, brand of capitalism, says Robert Kuttner.