CGT News

Contemplating Financial Design in the Aftermath

The bewildering complexity of recent economic events presents an immense intellectual challenge to both policy makers and academics to produce fresh ideas, financial architecture, and help create a more efficient and equitable mode of economic life. In light of such challenges, the Committee on Global Thought will host a series of public, multi-disciplinary conversations to explore the degree to which current and proposed institutional structures and settled socio-economic doctrine effectively address the sources of the crisis.

The next event in the series will be held on November 9, 2009. Event details can be found here.

Additional Panels Include:

A Bretton Woods Moment?

The panel will focus on the degree to which the current crisis represents a "Bretton Woods moment." Invited speakers will be asked to discuss the appropriate role of finance in the economy, at both the global and national scale. They will be asked to reflect upon the role governments and central banks should play in overseeing a new financial architecture, and whether new institutional innovations, such as a new global reserve currency, are required.

The "Great Recession" in Historical Perspective

Preventing another Great Depression propelled financial authorities and governments to use a wide variety of monetary and fiscal policy to counter the collapse of credit markets and global trade. While the degree to which further stimulus might be needed remains to be seen, underlying such decisions is an important question: to what degree does the current economic downturn differ from past crises? Invited speakers will be asked to reflect and explore this question.

Questioning the Self-Regulating Market

The faith of academics and regulators in the efficacy of self-regulating markets underlay the impetus to deregulation and was thus an important factor contributing to the financial crisis. In this session, panelists will assess the short-comings in the idea of the generic, regulation-free "market" and explore alternative conceptions of markets.