The Commanding Heights

The Commanding Heights is a PBS documentary, broken into 3 two-hour parts.  It is an excellent and thorough look at the various economic theories and their role in shaping the world economy over the last century.

The Commanding Heights Part One: The Battle of Ideas 
"A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack .... The year is 1914. Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world's economic order. Two individuals emerge whose ideas, shaped by very different experiences, will inform this debate and carry it forward. One is a brilliant, unconventional Englishman named John Maynard Keynes. The other is an outspoken émigré from ravaged Austria, Friedrich von Hayek. But a worldwide depression holds the capitalist nations in its grip. In opposition to both Keynes and Hayek stand not only Hitler's Third Reich but Stalin's Soviet Union, schooled in the communist ideologies of Marx and Lenin and bent on obliterating the capitalist system altogether. For more than half a century the battle of ideas will rage. From the totalitarian socialist systems to the fascist states, from the independent nations of the developing world to the mixed economies of Europe and the regulated capitalism of the United States, government planning will gradually take over the commanding heights. But in the 1970s, with Keynesian theory at its height and communism fully entrenched, economic stagnation sets in on all sides. When a British grocer's daughter and a former Hollywood actor become heads of state, they join forces around the ideas of Hayek, and new political and economic policies begin to transform the world."


Commanding Heights Part Two: The Agony of Reform 
"As the 1980s begin and the Cold War grinds on, the existing world order appears firmly in place. Yet beneath the surface powerful currents are carving away at the economic foundations. Western democracies still struggle with deficits and inflation, while communism hides the failure of its command economy behind a facade of military might. In Latin America populist dictators strive to thwart foreign economic exploitation, piling up debt and igniting hyperinflation in the process. In India and Africa bureaucracies established to end poverty through scientific planning spawn black markets and corruption and stifle enterprise. Worldwide, the strategies of government planning are failing to produce their intended results. From Bolivia and Peru to Poland and Russia, the free-market policies of Thatcher and Reagan are looked to as a possible blueprint for escape. One by one, economies in crisis adopt "shock therapy" -- a rapid conversion to free-market capitalism. As the command economies totter and collapse, privatization transfers economic power back into entrepreneurial hands, and whole societies go through wrenching change. For some the demands and opportunities of the market provide a longed for liberation. Others, lacking the means to adapt, see their security and livelihood swept away. In this new capitalist revolution enlightened enterprise and cynical exploitation thrive alike. The sum total of global wealth expands, but its unequal distribution increases, too, and economic regeneration exacts a high human price."


Commanding Heights Part Three: The New Rules of the Game 
"With communism discredited, more and more nations harness their fortunes to the global free-market. China, Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe, and Latin America all compete to attract the developed world's investment capital, and tariff barriers fall. In the United States Republican and Democratic administrations both embrace unfettered globalization over the objections of organized labor. But as new technology and ideas drive profound economic change, unforeseen events unfold. A Mexican economic meltdown sends the Clinton administration scrambling. Internet-linked financial markets, unrestricted capital flows, and floating currencies drive levels of speculative investment that dwarf trade in actual goods and services. Fueled by electronic capital and a global workforce ready to adapt, entrepreneurs create multinational corporations with valuations greater than entire national economies. When huge pension funds go hunting higher returns in emerging markets, enterprise flourishes where poverty once ruled, but risk grows, too. In Thailand the huge reservoir of available capital proves first a blessing, then a curse. Soon all Asia is engulfed in an economic crisis, and financial contagion spreads throughout the world, until Wall Street itself is threatened. A single global market is now the central economic reality. As the force of its effects is felt, popular unease grows. Is the system just too complex to be controlled, or is it an insiders' game played at outsiders' expense? New centers of opposition to globalization form and the debate turns violent over who will rewrite the rules. Yet prosperity continues to spread with the expansion of trade, even as the gulf widens further between rich and poor. Imbalances too dangerous for the system to ignore now drive its stakeholders to devise new means to include the dispossessed lest, once again, terrorism and war destroy the stability of a deeply interconnected world."

Chris Martenson's Crash Course

As my first real post, I unhesitatingly recommend the Crash Course by Chris Martenson. I cannot stress enough the importance of this video seminar, freely available at

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

This 20 chapter video seminar is the most comprehensive, far-reaching, thorough, even-handed, and level-headed look at the economy, energy, the environment, and the future. All this is accomplished in an educational, apolitical manner. Chris presents facts and graphs, not to shock and awe you, but to educate. He teases so much meaning out of each graph, it has changed my views of the graphs from "dry data" to "profound conclusions based in fact"

You must see this video seminar.

Be warned though, the first quarter of the seminar is slow and can take some effort to slog through. This is by far the weakest part of the entire course but it is not representative of the rest of the course.
Also, the overall length is about 3.5 hours which seems daunting at first but you will be compelled to finish once you get into the meat of presentation. (The previous statement is me speaking from witnessing people so drawn in by the series that they drop whatever plans they originally had just so they can finish the course.) In other words, the length becomes perfectly justifiable once you understand the breadth and depth of the seminar.

Watch the Crash Course

The chapters titles will give you a good idea what the course is all about:

• Chapter 1: Three Beliefs (Time: 1:46)
• Chapter 2: The Three "E"s (Time: 1:38)
• Chapter 3: Exponential Growth (Time: 6:20)
• Chapter 4: Compounding is the Problem (Time: 3:06)
• Chapter 5: Growth vs. Prosperity (Time: 3:40)
• Chapter 6: What is Money? (Time: 5:55)
• Chapter 7: Money Creation (Time: 4:19)
• Chapter 8: The Fed - Money Creation (Time: 7:13)
• Chapter 9: A Brief History of US Money (Time: 7:14)
• Chapter 10: Inflation (Time: 11:48)
• Chapter 11: How Much Is A Trillion? (Time: 3:28)
• Chapter 12: Debt (Time: 12:32)
• Chapter 13: A National Failure To Save (Time: 12:06)
• Chapter 14: Assets & Demographics (Time: 13:41)
• Chapter 15: Bubbles (Time: 14:10)
• Chapter 16: Fuzzy Numbers (Time: 15:52)
• Chapter 17: PART A: Peak Oil (Time: 17:52)
• Chapter 17: PART B: Energy Budgeting (Time: 12:15)
• Chapter 17: PART C: Energy And The Economy (Time: 7:05)
• Chapter 18: Environmental Data (Time: 16:22)
• Chapter 19: Future Shock (Time: 8:02)
• Chapter 20: What Should I Do? (Time: 19:48)

First

The aim of this blog is to act as a repository for all things I find interesting about the economy.

Economy interesting? "No way" you may say, just as I would have said a few short weeks ago.
But I shit you not.
After just a few weeks of dicking around on the internet: watching videos and reading, I feel absolutely compelled to show the glimpses of truth I have seen to others. I cannot imagine any other course of action.
Thus, this blog will be my running bookmark list of videos to see and things to read to more quickly and conveniently sort, sift, and share what I have found on the economy.