[URPE] Minsky Summer Seminar

[Wray, Randall]

Announcing
The Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar
June 18 - 26, 2011

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is pleased to announce that
it will hold the 2nd  Minsky summer seminar June 18-26, 2011. The
Seminar will provide a rigorous discussion of both the theoretical and
applied aspects of Minsky's economics, with an examination of meaningful
prescriptive policies relevant to the current economic and financial
crisis.

The summer seminar will be of particular interest to graduate students,
recent graduates and those at the beginning of their academic or
professional careers. The teaching staff will include well-known
economists concentrating on and expanding Minsky's work.

Applications may be made to Susan Howard at the Levy Institute
(howard at levy.org), and should include a current curriculum vitae.
Admission to the Summer School will include provision of room and board
on the Bard College Campus. A limited number of small travel
reimbursements of $100 for US fellows and $300 for foreign fellows,
respectively, will be available to participants.

Due to limited space availability, the deadline for applications is
March 31, 2011.

The summer seminar program will be organized by Jan A. Kregel, Dimitri
B. Papadimitriou and L. Randall Wray.

For more information, please visit www.levyinstitute.org

L. Randall Wray 
Research Director
Center for Full Employment and Price Stability
211 Haag Hall, Department of Economics
5120 Rockhill Road
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499
and
Senior Scholar 
Levy Economics Institute
Blithewood
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504



-----Original Message-----
From: urpe-announcements-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu on behalf of Richard Wolff
Sent: Sun 7/25/2010 1:59 PM
To: urpe-announcements at lists.econ.utah.edu
Subject: [URPE] website for possible teaching uses
 

Dear Friends,


Over the last year and a half I have been building up my website 
(www.rdwolff.com) so that it might serve as a repository - available always and 
free of charge - of both short and long essays on the economic crisis as well as 
pieces on economic theory, Marxism, and strategies for social change. We have 
also loaded onto the website audio interviews and videos of media interviews, 
lectures  and entire multi-session classes on the crisis, class analysis,  and 
Marxian economic theory (intro and advanced). Dr. Harriet Fraad and I together 
also produce podcasts and separate blogs on this website's Economy and 
Psychology sub-section. More is always being added to all parts of the website. 
Translations of various items are also available in a  variety of languages 
(Chinese, Greek, Persian, Bengali, German, French, etc).

As the time for making up class reading lists arrives, I wanted to invite you to 
make use of the website for teaching purposes (a major part of the motivation 
behind its existence and constant updating). The same applies to my DVD 
"Capitalism Hits the Fan" (cost = $19.95) and my more recent, 2010, book, 
Capitalism Hits the Fan: the Global Economic Meltdown and What to do About It 
(cost = $18.00 retail or around a discounted $14 if ordered via my website). All 
my books as well as those co-authored with Steve Resnick can be ordered via my 
website (and the DVD as well) through its automatic hook-up with Amazon which 
actually ships the items to buyers.

 
I'd be glad to answer any questions about the website, etc.; you can reach me by 
email via the website. Thanks.

Rick Wolff

ps: A sample of the kinds of short written pieces on the website is one recent  
work also published in the Monthly Review webzine, Common Dreams, etc.) is 
reproduced below.

www.rdwolff.com
www.capitalismhitsthefan.com

****************************

Austerity:  Why and for Whom?
by Rick Wolff 
Clearly, the global capitalist crisis that started in 2007 will be  neither 
short nor shallow.  The government rescue of the US  financial industry pumped 
enough extra money into the economy and  sufficiently reduced interest rates to 
give banks and the stock market  the heavily hyped "recovery" that started March 
2009 and is now over.   What is worse, their recovery never reached much of the 
rest of  the economy.  Efforts to broaden the recovery or extend it beyond  one 
limp year have failed.  That failure cost Washington trillions  in borrowed 
funds from lenders who now demand guarantees that those  loans will be repaid to 
them with interest.  Similar demands now  confront many other governments who 
likewise borrowed heavily to cope  with the crisis in their countries.
The guarantee demanded by lenders is "austerity."  Lenders want  governments to 
raise taxes or cut government spending or both.   Governments will then have 
more money available to pay interest on  loans and to repay those loans. 
 Governments that fail to impose  austerity will face higher interest on new and 
renewed loans or will be  denied loans which would cripple those governments' 
usual operations.   Austerity is yet another extreme burden imposed on the 
global  economy by the capitalist crisis (in addition to the millions suffering  
unemployment, reduced global trade, etc.).
Who are these lenders demanding austerity?  The globally active  financial 
enterprises -- mostly banks that collapsed in the crisis and  were rescued by 
their home governments -- are, together, also major  lenders to those 
governments.  Banks own their own governments'  debts but also other 
governments' debts.  For example, major banks  in France and Germany are among 
the Greek government's chief creditors.   US banks and related financial 
enterprises hold significant  amounts of other governments' debts and other 
nations' banks own much US  government debt.
Global capitalism's 2007 crisis froze the credit system that sustains  
capitalist production.  Private borrowers -- enterprises and  individuals - 
could no longer repay loans because their investments had  generated too little 
and their incomes had failed to grow enough.   Banks had failed to properly 
assess risks in deciding how much to  lend to whom.  They therefore stopped 
lending to private borrowers  because that had become too risky.  As private 
borrowers defaulted  and new lending atrophied, banks' capital and their profits 
collapsed.   The whole capitalist system ground toward a halt because credit  
became unavailable.  The only solution most leaders in capitalist  countries 
could conceive was to unfreeze credit by having the government  guarantee bank 
solvency, guarantee many private debts, invest massively  in and lend to private 
banks, and become the ultimate borrower of a  huge portion of loanable funds. 
 Banks everywhere lent to  governments because it had become unsafe to lend to 
almost anyone else.   Governments everywhere used the borrowed money to rescue 
banks and  other financial enterprises.
This peculiar "nationalization" of debt served capitalism by having  the 
government temporarily function as the lender and borrower  of last resort. 
 Nationalization unfroze the credit system  sufficiently to stop the crisis from 
collapsing global capitalism.   Few policy-makers (and few others) in 2008 and 
early 2009 worried  much about the consequences of so massively increasing 
government debts.   The looming possible capitalist system collapse overwhelmed 
worry  about any "longer run."
The international banks that were rescued (from their own bad loans  and 
investments) by governments now worry that governments they lent to  won't be 
able to repay those loans.  Banks threaten to make further  loans much more 
costly or even impossible unless those governments  impose "austerity."  Most 
political leaders recognize that the  banks' threats, if carried out under their 
watch, would end their  careers quickly and badly.  All capitalists see in 
possible  government defaults the specter of another credit freeze with 
terrifying  ramifications for global capitalism.  Still worse for those banks:  
governments in default would not likely be able to borrow again to  rescue banks 
again.
Nearly all current political leaders of major capitalist countries  responded 
positively to the banks' demand for austerity (as in Canada's  recent G-20 
meeting).  This immediately raised a basic political  conflict always simmering 
inside capitalism: who will pay increased  taxes and who will suffer decreased 
government spending?  Militants  in Europe have already marched and struck 
against austerity as an  unacceptable plan to make workers pay to fix 
capitalists' crises; more  general strikes are set in many European nations with 
a Europe-wide  general strike now scheduled for September 29.  Meanwhile, 
capitalists work with  politicians to define as "reasonable in crisis times" 
austerity programs  mixing both tax increases (chiefly on workers) and spending 
cuts  (chiefly on workers).
An Athens trucker says, "Public employees here don't work hard  enough, so it is 
reasonable to cut their pay."  A Parisian clerk  thinks it "reasonable to 
postpone the official retirement age a few  years; we all live longer now."  A 
Minneapolis office worker agrees  that it is "reasonable, in crisis times, to 
get by with fewer public  services."  A New York laboratory technician supports 
a new tax on  cell-phones as "probably reasonable; after all, people overuse  
them."  Remarkably, such notions of "reasonable" are silent about  other 
possible and, to say the least, more "reasonable" forms of  austerity.
Let's consider some alternative "reasonable" kinds of austerity  (i.e., 
austerity for others) and then question austerity itself.   Serious efforts to 
collect income taxes from US-based  multinational corporations, especially those 
who use internal pricing  mechanisms to escape US taxation, would generate vast 
new federal  revenues.  The same applies to wealthy individuals.  The US has no 
federal property tax on holdings of stocks,  bonds, and cash accounts (states 
and localities levy no such property  taxes either).  If the federal government 
levied a 1 per cent  tax on assets between $100,000 to 499,000, and 1.5 per cent 
on assets  above $500,000, that would raise much new federal revenue (everyone's  
first $100,000 could be exempted just as the existing US income tax  exempts the 
first few thousands of dollars of individual incomes).   Exiting the Iraq and 
Afghanistan disasters would do likewise.   Ending tax exemptions for super-rich 
private educational institutions (Harvard,  Yale, etc.) and for religious 
institutions (church-goers would then need  to pay the costs of their churches) 
would be among the many other such  alternative "reasonable" austerity measures. 
 Comparable  alternatives apply -- and are being struggled over -- in other  
countries.
A capitalist system that generates so massive a crisis, spreads it  globally, 
and then proposes mass austerity to "overcome" it has lost the  right to 
continue unchallenged.  Should we not be publicly  debating whether America (and 
the world) might be better served by going  beyond capitalism?  Can we not learn 
from capitalism's repeated  cycles (failures) and change to a new, 
non-capitalist system?   Having learned hard lessons from the first socialist 
attempts  during the last century in Russia, China, and beyond, can we not rise 
to  the challenge to make a new attempt that avoids their failures and  builds 
on their strengths?  When better than now? 

________________________________
 Rick   Wolff is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in  
Amherst and also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program in  International 
Affairs of the New School University in New York.    He is the author of New 
Departures in Marxian Theory (Routledge, 2006) among many other publications.  
Check out Rick  Wolff's  documentary film on the current economic crisis, 
Capitalism  Hits the Fan, at www.capitalismhitsthefan.com.  Visit Wolff's    Web 
site at www.rdwolff.com,  and order a copy of his new book Capitalism Hits the 
Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown  and What to Do about It. 

________________________________
 URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wolff030710.html  
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