Crash Course Economics (Crash Course)
Explore every episode of Crash Course Economics
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 05 Feb 2024 | Asset Managers and the Rise of Rentier Capitalism — with Brett Christophers | 01:01:45 | |
Embark on a journey encompassing Brett Christophers' latest three books in this Crash Course Episode. He provides a comprehensive overview of the ascent of rentier capitalism, observed in diverse forms across political economies, and hones in on the pivotal role of asset managers in value extraction and shaping a rentier economy. Key questions we will explore with Brett:
Brett Christophers is professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research. He published over six books covering various aspects of Western capitalism. For our talk we focus on his three latest books published by Verso, ‘Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?’,’ Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World’, The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet --- About Crash Course Economics Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/366770/110811319736730927/share YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) --- About Crash Course Economics Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/366770/110811319736730927/share YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) | |||
| 20 Feb 2024 | Rentierism and Big Pharma — with Nick Dearden | 00:59:35 | |
In this episode we do a deep dive into the realm of Big Pharma. As with Big Tech, this industry epitomises large-scale rentier income extraction by corporations. Despite the industry's assertions that the costs associated with drug research and development justify high prices, the stark reality of profit margins unveils a different narrative. We will further ask Nick:
For over 20 years Nick Dearden has been a campaigner against corporate globalisation and for global economic justice. He is also the director of the British NGO Global Justice Now. Last October, he published his latest book on the pharmaceutical industry: Pharmanomics. How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health. About Crash Course Economics Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/366770/110811319736730927/share YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) | |||
| 15 Jun 2020 | Crisis, central banks and democratic control: the building blocks for change | 01:03:12 | |
Sara Murawski en Rodrigo Fernandez speak with Jens van’t Klooster about crisis, central banks and democratic control. Jens van 't Klooster is a Research Foundation — Flanders postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven and member of the research group ‘A New Normative Framework for Financial Debt’ at the University of Amsterdam. Jens' research fits somewhere between normative political philosophy and political economy. Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://crashcourseeconomics.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8367ecf9343da28ffa5d80d46&id=e197615bf5 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics | |||
| 22 Jun 2020 | Central banking, Finance and Power with Benjamin Braun | 01:07:01 | |
Benjamin Braun speaks with Sara Murawski and Rodrigo Fernandez about central banking, finance and power, in the second webinar of Crash Course series on monetary policy, central banks and ideology. Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://crashcourseeconomics.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8367ecf9343da28ffa5d80d46&id=e197615bf5 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics | |||
| 30 Jun 2020 | Monetary policy: effects on the Global South with Pablo Bortz | 01:03:13 | |
Pablo Bortz speaks with Sara Murawski and Rodrigo Fernandez about monetary policy and the effects on the Global South in the third webinar of Crash Course series on monetary policy, central banks and ideology.
Pablo G. Bortz obtained his Ph.D. at the Delft University of Technology. He is the author of Inequality, Growth, and ‘Hot’ Money (Edward Elgar). He is currently Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of San Martín, Argentina and he also teaches at the University of General Sarmiento. He worked at the Argentine Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Central Bank, and was Economic Affairs Associate at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://crashcourseeconomics.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8367ecf9343da28ffa5d80d46&id=e197615bf5 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics | |||
| 15 Jul 2020 | Monetary policy against austerity? with Daniela Gabor | 01:13:37 | |
Daniela Gabor speaks with Sara Murawski and Rodrigo Fernandez about monetary policy and austerity in the fourth and final webinar of Crash Course series on monetary policy, central banks and ideology. What are different linkages between monetary and fiscal policy? What can we learn from history?
Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://crashcourseeconomics.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8367ecf9343da28ffa5d80d46&id=e197615bf5 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics | |||
| 19 Oct 2020 | Debt, Dependence and Development in Historical Perspective with Andew Fischer | 01:06:00 | |
Sara Murawski en Rodrigo Fernandez speak with Andew Fischer about Debt, Dependence and Development in Historical Perspective. | |||
| 26 Oct 2020 | Dependency Theory and Uneven Development with Ingrid Kvangraven | 01:06:45 | |
In this episode of Crash Course Sara Murawski en Rodrigo Fernandez discuss Dependency Theory with Ingrid Kvangraven. How does dependency theory help us to formulate different answers to the problems developing countries face today. We try to understand what it is and why it has been lost in debates on the global south, after being dominant in the 70s and 80s. Since the IMF and the world bank imposed their neo-liberal adjustment programs, development has become synonymous with attracting foreign direct investments (FDI) from multinational corporations. In this dominant worldview, developing countries need to focus on implementing policies (‘reforms’) that attract FDI at all cost. Success can be achieved by following the prescribed market-oriented changes that convert economic assets and activities in a potential tradable financial asset. Dependency theory on the other hand departs from the opposite perspective. In this approach ‘underdevelopment’ is the result of a specific type of integration in a capitalist global economy that is uneven. “Core countries benefit from the global system at the expense of periphery countries, which face structural barriers that make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to develop in the same way that the core countries did.” - | |||
| 09 Nov 2020 | What is Subordinate Financialization? with Ewa Karwowski | 01:03:19 | |
Ewa Karwowski will guide us through ways to quantify and recognize financialization in the global south. Also we will discuss why this particular theoretical frame may be useful to look at contemporary issues that developing countries face and how it is related to structural issues. | |||
| 08 Dec 2020 | Confronting Debt in the Global South with Dominic Brown | 01:03:26 | |
Dominic Brown will discuss the strategies being proposed by popular movements in the Global South to confront their debt. He will reflect on current movements and their demands from a historical perspective with a focus on South Africa – his home country. Brown will demonstrate how debt issuance in the Global South is often used to implement neoliberal and austerity policies, and discuss how this tendency can be stopped from the bottom up. Is there a perspective for collective opposition from the side of ‘Southern’ countries towards the new debt crisis that is looming now that the pandemic is locking down economies? To what extent do the current campaigns build on the former ones? What lessons can be drawn from the Jubilee 2000 Debt Cancellation Campaign? How does the issue of debt connect to other issues, such as inequality and poverty? And how does debt unite different social struggles? Which theory of change underlies all these movements that fight for global justice and redistribute change? Dominic Brown is Economic Justice Programme Manager at the Alternative Information & Development Centre (AIDC). AIDC was formed in 1996 in response to the democratic transition in South Africa and the new opportunities and challenges it brought those seeking greater social justice within the democracy. Over the years AIDC has played a leading role in various civil society responses to ongoing inequality including facilitating the launch and building of the South African Jubilee 2000 debt cancellation campaign, and the Right to Work Campaign. --- | |||
| 15 Mar 2021 | Arrested development and austerity: Avoiding the debt trap with Daniel Munevar & María José Romero | 01:16:36 | |
Since March 2020, 80 IMF lending arrangements have been approved. These arrangements arise in an era of historical global debt levels. The world is witnessing an insufficient and inadequate multilateral response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which will lock a large number of countries in a decade-long crisis of debt and austerity.
Daniel Munevar is a Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer supporting Eurodad's work on debt justice. He is interested in the analysis of the links between debt sustainability and the 2030 Agenda. Before joining Eurodad in 2020, Daniel worked for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and advising the Ministries of Finance of Colombia and Greece on debt related issues. Daniel has a Masters degree in Public Policy from the University of Texas in Austin. He speaks Spanish, English and a bit of Swedish. María José Romero is Policy and Advocacy Manager for Eurodad's work on publicly-backed private finance and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). Her role involves research and analysis, advocacy and monitoring policy developments. She joined Eurodad in 2012 and before that she worked at the secretariat of the Latin American Network on Debt, Development and Rights (LATINDADD), based in Peru, on tax justice and development finance. While in Uruguay, her home country, she was for five years Coordinator of the IFIs Latin American Monitor project at the Third World Institute (ITeM), where her main roles were networking and policy monitoring at a regional and global level on IFI-related issues and development finance. She is currently a PhD candidate in Development Economics at SOAS, University of London, with a research project on the global promotion of public-private partnerships in health and education. --- | |||
| 26 Apr 2021 | The rise of Technoscientific Capitalism with Kean Birch | 01:02:03 | |
In this first Crash Course episode of our series on Big Tech, Techno-feudalism and Democracy, we take a bird’s-eye view before we dive into more specific issues in the episodes to come. To introduce you to the topic, we have invited York University professor Kean Birch, specialised in Big Tech and emerging forms of digital rentiership. Rodrigo and Sara ask Birch:
Kean Birch is professor at York University, Canada who's interested in Big Tech and emerging forms of digital rentiership; obsessed with thinking about assets! Birch is particularly interested in understanding technoscientific capitalism and draws on a range of perspectives from science & technology studies, economic geography, and economic sociology to study it. More specifically, his research focuses on the restructuring and transformation of the economy & financial knowledges, technoscience & technoscientific innovation, and the relationship between markets & natural environments. Check out Kean Birch's writing at http://www.keanbirch.net/ and https://keanbirch.medium.com/ --- | |||
| 10 May 2021 | Intellectual Property & Monopoly Capitalism — with Cecilia Rikap | 01:03:51 | |
In this second Crash Course episode of the series on Big Tech, Techno-feudalism and Democracy, we will zoom in on intellectual property. We have invited political economist Cecilia Rikap to explain where intellectual property comes from, what its role is in fabricating monopoly power, and why it is important to understand the rise of Big tech and Big Pharma.
Cecilia Rikap is a political economist, researcher CONICET, Univ de Paris & COSTECH Univ Tech Compiègne. She studies the rising concentration of intangible assets, focusing on power relations and the distribution of data and innovation economic gains, resulting geopolitical tensions, and the effects on knowledge commons & development. Rikap just finished her new book Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual monopoly capitalism uncovered. --- | |||
| 24 May 2021 | Platforms and the limits of Competition Policy — with Farwa Sial | 01:00:28 | |
In this third episode, we discussed the challenges that Big Tech confronts us with in terms of regulation. The platform economy has fundamentally changed our societies and has made more and more citizens dependent on less and less companies. Due to lobbying efforts as well as ignorance and incompetence on many policy levels, this sector has massively expanded without much government oversight. The US has started talking about splitting up Facebook, but critics warn that this is not sufficient. Farwa Sial zoomed in on the regulatory problems and trends that intellectual monopolies and the platform economy have raised. We asked her:
Farwa Sial is a Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer in Development Finance at Eurodad and a Research Fellow at the Global Development Institute (GDI) University of Manchester. She is the steering group member of Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-econ) and the Association of Heterodox Economics. Her research focuses on comparative development, Industrial policy, corporations and the evolving dynamics of late-capitalism in the context of financialization and technological development. Twitter @farwasial --- | |||
| 08 Jun 2021 | Big Tech & the Global South — with Nandini Chami | 01:00:22 | |
In this fourth Crash Course episode of the series on Big Tech, Techno-feudalism and Democracy, we take a closer look at how we could resist the enormous and all-encompassing influence Big Tech and platform economies have on our lives. How can we regain control over our individual and collective data as they are being increasingly commodified and traded?
Nandini Chami is Deputy Director at IT for Change. She is engaged in policy research and advocacy at the intersections of digital policy, development justice and gender equality. Her research interests are data justice, inclusive platform economies, and gender and digital trade. She co-leads the Digital Justice project, a collaboration between IT for Change and Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era network (www.dawnnet.org) on gender equality in the digital economy and she is co-investigator of Policy frameworks for the platform economy, an IDRC-supported multi-country research study on platform governance models for the global South. | |||
| 28 Jun 2021 | Big Tech vs The Public — with Francesca Bria | 00:51:53 | |
Innovation economist and digital policy expert Francesca Bria joins us to talk about her experiences trying to counter the power of Big Tech and using technology for democratic decision making. Bria is the former CTO of the City of Barcelona and has been leading European Research and Innovation projects related to digital sovereignty, digital democracy and crypto platforms. In 2015 local elections in Spain were spectacular and radical democratic local forums won in many places and in some of the largest cities (Barcelona, Madrid, and others). Most prominent was the victory in Barcelona under the umbrella of Barcelona en Comú, and with the urban activist Ada Colau as mayor Francesca Bria became Barcelona’s Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer and has developed programs to curb the power of the tech giants and to use technology for democratic decision making. One of the international organisations that Francesca helped to develop was the Decode Project (https://decodeproject.eu/) with the aim to provide tools that put individuals in control of whether they keep their personal information private or share it for the public good. Francesca Bria is the President of the Italian National Innovation Fund. She is an Italian information technologist who lectures at various universities and is a consultant to the United Nations and the European Commission. | |||
| 18 Oct 2021 | The future of the EU fiscal framework — with Ludovic Suttor-Sorel | 01:03:02 | |
In this special one-off we focus on European fiscal policy, following FiscalMatters' week of debate in which the future of the EU fiscal framework is discussed: “Too often important policy decisions happen behind closed doors. We need an open and accessible debate on Europe’s fiscal future”. Together with Ludovic Suttor-Sorel from Finance Watch we look at the current EU fiscal rules and how they should change in order to face the challenges we face regarding climate change, a just transition, rising inequality, unemployment and public health. How can we, civil society, academics and social and environmental activists contribute to fiscal policy for the good?
Ludovic Suttor-Sorel is a Research and Advocacy officer. Ludovic works on fiscal policy, sustainable finance, natural capital and the nexus between biodiversity and finance. | |||
| 24 Jan 2024 | Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech — with Cory Doctorow | 00:58:57 | |
In this first Crash Course episode of the new series, we invite writer-activist Cory Doctorow to explore the rise of Rentier and Monopoly Capitalism in the tech sector. Is the platform economy in the last phase of what he calls Enshittification? “First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” - Cory Doctorow We will ask him:
Cory Doctorow is an activist and journalist. He writes seemingly non-stop about the internet, the future, radical changes in property rights and alternative futures. His work includes children’s books, fiction and non-fiction. Topics include How to disassemble Big Tech, Creative labour markets and monopolies, and How to destroy surveillance capitalism. He is also known for his website, Pluralistic.net. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. He was born in Toronto, Canada, and now lives in Los Angeles, USA. Check out more on Cory Doctorow on Pluralistic.net or Craphound.com --- About Crash Course Economics Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/366770/110811319736730927/share YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) | |||
| 11 Mar 2024 | Monopoly Power and EU Competition Policy — with Angela Wigger | 00:59:25 | |
During the pandemic and its aftermath, the world witnessed a revival of new narratives and strategies related to industrial policy in a geopolitically competitive environment. We invite Angela Wigger to reflect on the history of competition policy in the EU and provide a deeper understanding of the latest “come-back” of EU industrial policy. She will explain how EU competition policy is enshrined in the shift towards a neoliberal order since the 1980s. Angela will provide a perspective on contemporary competition policy since the financial crisis, reflecting on the role of political institutions like the European Commission. We will further ask Angela:
Angela Wigger is an associate professor on Global Political Economy at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (the Netherlands). She researches capitalist crises from a historical materialist perspective. Focal points are the geopolitics of EU industrial and antitrust policy, industrial re-shoring attempts, the “competitiveness” fetish, internal devaluation and debt-led accumulation in the age of rentier capitalism. She wrote “The Politics of European Competition Regulation. A Critical Political Economy Perspective” (with H. Buch-Hansen, 2011, Routledge/RIPE) and published in journals like New Political Economy, New Political Science, RIPE, JCMS, Economy & Society, Globalizations, Geoforum, Capital & Class, Ephemera, and many more. You can get in touch with Angela via this address: angela.wigger@ru.nl Follow Angela here on X: @AngelaWigger About Crash Course Economics Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice. Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future. Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/ Newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/366770/110811319736730927/share YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) | |||