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Wall St. is appropriately the
centre of attention for those interested in making positive social change.  Over the last three decades a
power shift has taken place within capitalism, from manufacturing to financial
capital. This course will look at the nature of this change, especially the
transition from investment to speculation—and the dramatic redistribution
of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the "One percent." It
will also examine the alternatives to what's referred to as the Casino Economy and transitional
strategies for redirecting financial and material resources from Wall St.
to Main St. community economic development. Particular focus will be on the
role of emerging information technologies—both their unhealthy channelling
into Wall St. speculation, and their appropriate application in various
forms of community investment—including locavesting,
pension fund SRI, green micro-finance, local stock exchanges, crowdfunding, the "Slow Money" movement, and
the movement for basic income guarantees.
The course is open to all grad students and requires no prior
background in economics or political-economy.  Students will be expected, however, to grapple
with issues of theory as well as practice, to be able to appreciate
distinctions between "real" and "financial" wealth. An
underlying theme of the course is the strategic importance of emerging
green and human potentials. This is because these potentials represent a
threat to established power relationships, and because directly moving to
actualize these positive capacities is the best way to achieve justice and
equality as well. The solution to Wall St. destruction is not a return to
regulatory and manufacturing models of a past era, but new forms of positive
investment in creative and regenerative development. We will survey key
needs in various sectors for self-reliant community development, as well as
the grassroots revolution taking place in alternative finance that can
ultimately transform our world. From this perspective, "community
development" is not seen as a supplement to 'larger' economic
development but the very essence of sustainable
economics.
Besides
class participation, primary student work will involve a mid-term
mini-review, a collaborative class presentation, and a final term paper.
The
course will consist of 12 classes, beginning July 3, held on each Tuesday
and Thursday afternoon. The final two sessions, Aug. 7 and 9, will feature
class presentations by students (2 or 3 students collaborating on a topic
of their choice). Presentation topics can be (or not, as preferred) the
same as that of individual student final papers.
Consult
this page regularly for more details, including specific readings for the
course.
Topics /
Schedule:
Tuesday July 3 Overview/Introductions
Part 1: Casino Capitalism: Why
Occupy Finance?
Thursday July 5 Money, Finance, Debt
& Economic Development
Readings:
·
Brian
Milani, "What is
Green Economics?", Race,
Poverty & the Environment: A journal for social and environmental
justice, Vol. 13 No. 1, Summer 2006 
·
David
Korten, "Beyond
the Bubble Economy," Yes! magazine, Feb. 2012
·
Tom Greco, "The World's Ominous Reckoning,"
Carolyn Baker.net, Jan. 2011
·
John Bellamy Foster and Hannah Holleman, "The Financial Power Elite,"
Monthly Review, vol. 62, issue 1, May 2010
·
CCPA, Canada's Richest 1% Income Shares at
Historic High, CCPA news release.
Optional:
·
Armine
Yalnizyan, The
Rise of Canada's Richest 1%, CCPA report, Dec. 2010
·
Jeff Fraser, Canada Income Inequality: An Infographic, Huffington Post, May 27,
2012
·
Ellen
Brown, "From
Matriarchies of Abundance to Patriarchies of Debt," Chapter 5 of The Web of Debt, 2009
·
Sheila Block, The Role of Race and Gender in Ontario's
Growing Gap, CCPA report, June 2010
Class Video: Money as Debt: How money
is created
Powerpoint Presentation: Phantom Wealth
Tuesday July 10
The Nature and History of Financialization
Readings:
·
Les
Leopold, "The
Iron Law of Fantasy Finance," excerpt from The Looting of America: How Wall
Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and
Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It, Chelsea Green
publishers, 2010
·
David Harvey, "Their
Crisis, Our Challenge," interview with Marco Berlinguer
and Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper, March 2009
·
Ellen
Russell, "Should
Canadians Worry about a Banking Crisis?", Toronto Star, June 23,
2012
§
Optional: Ellen Russell, No More Swimming Naked: The need for modesty
in Canadian banking, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
report, June 2012
·
Simon
Johnson, "The
Canadian Banking Fallacy," The Baseline Scenario, March 25, 2010
§
Optional: Rachel Mendleson, interview
with Bruce Livesey, author of Thieves of Bay St.: How banks,
brokerages and the wealthy steal billions from Canadians, Huffington
Post, April 18, 2012
·
Matt Taibbi,
"How Wall St. Killed Financial Reform,"
Rolling Stone magazine, May
24th, 2012
·
Jim
Stanford, "The
Global Economic Crisis, Part 1," CD Roundtable interview, Canadian
Dimension magazine, January 2012
§
Optional: Parts 2 (Majorie Cohen) and 3 (Sam Ginden) of the roundtable
Optional:
·
John Bellamy Foster, The Financialization
of Capitalism, Monthly Review 58, 11 (April 2007);
reprinted as chapter 4 of Foster and Magdoff's The Great
Financial Crisis: Causes and consequences, NY: Monthly Review
Press, 2009
·
Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie,
"Revealed:
The capitalist network that runs the world," New Scientist, Oct.
24,2011
·
CCPA,
Canada's
Secret Bank Bailout Revealed, press release April 30, 2012
·
full
report: David Mcdonald, The Big Banks Big Secret: Estimating
government support for Canadian banks during the financial crisis,
CCPA report, April 2012
·
Paul
Bowles, Keely Dempsey, Trevor Shaw, "The
Local Financial Crisis: Exorbitant interest on payday loans hurt many
Canadians," CCPA Monitor, Feb. 1,2011
Class Video: David Harvey: The Crisis
of Capitalism, RSA Animate
Money,
Power & Wall St., part 1, PBS.org
Thursday July 12
Information, Finance and Power
Readings:
·
David Forrest, review
of Kurtzman's The Death of Money, note the
definition of Megabyte Money.
·
Satyajit
Das on Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Finance, Naked Capitalism website
·
Yochai
Benkler, A
Moment of Opportunity and Challenge, Chapter 1 of The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets
and Freedom, Yale
U. Press, 2005
·
Laurence
Lessig, “Some Like It Hot: Piracy & culture,”
Wired magazine, Issue 12.03 (March 2004)
Optional
·
James Boyle, "A
Manifesto on WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property," Duke
Law and Technology Review, August 2004
·
David Morris, "Why
is Multi-Billion-Dollar Telecom Time Warner fretting over a small city in
North Carolina?", Alternet, June 27,
2011
ATTENTION: also
watch what you can of this film before class: RiP: A Remix
Manifesto
Class Video:
·
Yochai Benkler: Open-source Economics, TED talk
·
Laurence Lessig:
How Creativity is
Being Strangled by the Law, TED talk
Powerpoint Presentation: Information, Finance &
Power
Tuesday July 17
Adventures in Casino Capitalism
Readings:
·
Jim Stanford, "Canada:
Land of Mines and Banks," Progressive Economics Forum, July 2,
2012
·
Paul Weinburg,
"Canadian
Bank Meltdown Still Possible," Straightgoods,
June 5, 2012
·
Ellen
Brown, "Canada’s 2012 Budget:
Imposing Austerity on the World’s Most Resource-rich Country,"
Common Dreams, April 1, 2012
·
Robert Reich, "Libor:
The Wall St. Scandal of All Scandals," AlterNet, July 7, 2012
·
Optional: Robert Scheer,
"Crime
of the Century," Truthdig, July 6, 2012
·
Michael
Hudson, "Learning
from the Eurocrisis," interviewed by
Paul Jay of the Real News Network, May 10, 2012
·
Justin
Elliott, "The
20 Worst Wall St. Banks Funding Our Filthiest Polluters,"
AlterNet, Dec. 13, 2011
·
Optional: Rainforest Action Network, Financing
Global Warming: Canadian Banks and Fossil Fuels, Climate-Friendly
Banking website, 2008
·
Jim Hightower, "How
the Monsters at Goldman Sachs Caused a Greek Tragedy," AlterNet,
March 4, 2010
·
video (6 min.): Cenk
Uygur: What We Can
Learn from Iceland, June 16, 2012
·
Optional:
Ben Chu, "Iceland:
The broken economy that got out of jail," The Independent, Sept.
6, 2011
Optional:
·
Will
Hutton, "Let's
End this Rotten Culture that Only Rewards Rogues," The Observer,
June 30, 2012
·
Matt Taibbi, "Austerity
Can't Be Just for Regular People," RS May 8, 2012
Videos:
·
clips
from Inside Job
·
Taming
the Vampire Squid: Take back our banks
Part 2: Alternative Finance for Community Development
Thursday July 19
Real Life Economics 
Readings:
·
John Talberth, “A New Bottom Line for Progress,” Chapter 2, The
State of the World 2008, NY/Washington: Worldwatch Institute,
2008
·
David
Korten, "When
Bankers Rule the World: How we can call out the myths, restructure the
banking system, shut down the con game, and take back America," Yes! magazine, March 2012
·
American Independent Business Alliance, The
Multiplier Effect of Local Independent Business Ownership
·
Jayati Ghosh, "Financial Crises and the Impact on Women," Development (2010)
53(3), 381–385.
·
Seth Wessler and Dominique Apollon, "Shut
Out of Wealth: Foreclosures Mean Setbacks in the Battle for Gender and
Racial Equity," Economica website, 2010.
·
Optional: Inequality Data & Statistics, Inequality.org
·
Canadian
Index of Wellbeing. How
are Canadians Really Doing? Highlights: Canadian Index of Wellbeing 1.0.
Waterloo, ON: Canadian Index of Wellbeing and University of Waterloo,
October 2011 [skim]
·
Toronto's
Vital Signs 2011, community indicators report summary in Toronto Star,
Oct. 4, 2011. (Especially note capsule summaries on p.4)
·
Optional: full report
Optional:
·
Brian
Milani, "Mindful Markets, Value Revolution and the
Green Economy: EPR, Certification and the New Regulation",
2009
·
Linda
Pannozzo and Ronald Colman, New
Policy Directions for Nova Scotia: Using the Genuine Progress Index to
Count What Matters, GPI Atlantic report, July 2009 [skim pages
1-22]
·
Garrett Martin and Amar Patel, Going Local: Quantifying the
Economic Impacts of Buying from Locally Owned Businesses in Portland, Maine
, Maine Center for Economic Policy report, December 2011
·
Dan
Houston and Dana Eness, Thinking
Outside the Box: A report on independent merchants and the New Orleans
economy, Civic Economics report in collaboration with the New
Orleans Urban Conservancy, 2009
·
Ecological
Footprint for Finance, Global Footprint Network initiative
·
Sustainable Seattle:
·
Seattle Area Happiness
Initiative
·
Sustainable
Community Indicators
·
Viki
Sonntag, Why
Local Linkages Matter: Findings
from the Local Food Economy Study, report for Sustainable
Seattle, February 2008
·
Jason
McLennan, "A
'Living' Built-Environment: the Living Building Challenge certification
program," Yes! magazine, Nov. 16,2009
·
Happy Planet Index (browse)
·
Christine
MacDonald, "What
GIS Mapping Technology Can Tell You About the Health of Your Neighbourhood
and Your Risk for Illness," AlterNet July 4, 2012
·
Maureen
Hart et al, Sustainability
Indicators, Sustainable Measures
website (browse)
·
(French)
Commission on Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress: Commission Report
, 2009
Videos:
What
is the Genuine Progress Index?
What
is Gross National Happiness?
Keeping Austin Weird on Local Multipliers
Tuesday July 24
Qualitative Development
and Alternative
Financial Strategies
Readings:
·
David Korten,
"How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule," Introduction
to report from The New Economy Working Group.
·
Optional: full
report
·
Gar Alperovitz, "Occupy
the Banks: Strategies for Transformation," Yes! magazine, October
2011
·
Stacy
Mitchell, "Banking
for the Rest of Us," Sojourners magazine, April 1, 2012
·
Michael
Shuman, , "Ten Reasons for Financial
Optimism (If you invest locally)," BALLE blog, January 2012
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Robert
Pollin, A
US Financial Transactions Tax: How Wall St. can pay for its mess,
New Labor Forum 21(2): 96-99, Spring 2012
·
Ellen
Brown, "Greece
and the Euro: 50 ways to leave your lover," June 4, 2012
·
Paul
Weinberg, "Self-financing
Toronto: City could ease cash crisis if it put revenues in a bank of its
own," Straight Goods, May 14, 2012
·
Carne
Ross, Revolution
Through Banking? The Nation, December 11, 2011
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Optional:
·
Josh Harkinson, "Meet
the Financial Wizards Working with Occupy Wall St.," Mother Jones,
Dec. 13, 2011
·
Josh Harkinson, "In
a 325-page SEC letter, Occupy's Finance Gurus Take on Wall St. Lobbyists,"
Mother Jones mag, Feb. 14, 2012
·
Gar Alperovitz, "The
Rise of the New Economy Movement," AlterNet, May 20, 2012
·
Woody
Tasch, excerpts
from Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and
Fertility Mattered, Chelsea Green Publishers, 2008
·
Neva Goodwin, "A
New Economics for the 21st Century," New Economics Institute, 2012
·
New Economics Foundation (UK), A Green
New Deal: Joined-up policies to solve the triple crunch
of the credit crisis, climate change and high oil prices, executive
summary, NEF report, July 2008
·
Feminism,
Finance and the Future of #Occupy - An interview with Silvia Federici, libcom.org, Nov. 27, 2011
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