Video stream available – The Global Economy after two years of the pandemic

It’s Wednesday and I am flat out finalising writing commitments and my teaching responsibilities at present. I have also been doing a lot of media interviews given the inflation release yesterday. People are believing the nonsense coming out in the financial press that inflation is ‘out-of-control’ and interest rates need to be hiked to stop it in its tracks. How will increasing interest rates allow a Covid sick truck driver to return to work any quicker? How will a rise in rates, increase the number of container ships in the right locations? Etc. It is tiresome to be sure. Today a video, some information about my university classes that we are making available to the general public (starting later today), and then some post minimalism.

Live stream – The Global Economy after 2 years of the Pandemic – now available

Last night, I streamed a live YouTube presentation which is my Annual Lecture in Global Political Economy as part of my role at the University of Helsinki as the Docent Professor of Global Political Economy.

For the last two years, I have had to make this presentation remotely for obvious reasons. I hope in 2023 I can once again travel to the fair city of Helsinki and give the lecture face to face.

Here is the full presentation which includes the Q&A section.

This lecture sets the scene for my formal teaching classes in the postgraduate program in political science and international relations program at the University of Helsinki in MMT and political economy, which run for the rest of this week and next.

The next five lectures are more analytical and will be open to the public via Zoom.

The teaching program will be:

• Tuesday January 25, 2022 – Streamed public lecture (YouTube) starting 10:15 Helsinki time.
• Wednesday, January 26 – first Zoom lecture with class – 08:15-09:45 Helsinki time.
• Thursday, January 27 – second Zoom lecture – 10:15-11:45 Helsinki time.
• Tuesday, February 1 – third Zoom lecture – 10:15-11:45 Helsinki time.
• Wednesday, February 2 – fourth Zoom lecture – 08:15-09:45 Helsinki time.
• Thursday, February 3 – final Zoom lecture – 10:15-11:45 Helsinki time.

The Zoom link for the lectures is:

https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/5354174274?pwd=OHdTdWJzSHNndHpyVkV2Y0lJUExRZz09

Meeting ID: 535 417 4274
Passcode: ETZhk9

This is an MMTed initiative.

MMTed MOOC – Modern Monetary Theory: Economics for the 21st Century

MMTed in conjunction with the University of Newcastle, will once again offer our MOOC Modern Monetary Theory: Economics for the 21st Century, starting on February 9, 2022.

Last year we had around 3,600 participants enrolled.

You can now enrol for the course, which is free and runs for 4-weeks from February 9, 2022.

The course is offered through the University of Newcastle edX program.

If you complete the course, you will have a firm understanding of MMT. So why not learn about MMT properly with lots of videos, discussion, and more.

For – Further Details.

Music – War of the Worlds

This is what I have been listening to while working this morning.

Recently, I watched the TV series – War of the Worlds – which is based on the science fiction novel – War of the Worlds – written by H.G. Wells and published in 1897 in London.

The novel pursued a number of themes including the problems arising from the expansion of the British Empire via colonial exploitation.

H.G. Wells was concerned with the idea that instead of seeing the alien power as the aggressor, we should reflect on what we have done as a species ourselves.

He wrote in – Chapter 1 ‘The Eve of the War’ – of the struggles that the Martians had to survive and how their intellects were forced to develop superior skills to us (H.G. Wells was a fan natural selection).

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.

And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The two seasons of the TV series are really interesting and thought-provoking.

It was also relief from reading the financial press where self-interested bankers and their sycophants in the media are continually demanding interest rate rises to deal with the ‘out-of-control’ inflation.

Here is one of the tracks from the soundtrack which is really interesting in structure and melody.

It is an exercise in post minimalism, which I really like.

The music was a feature of the program and was written by Belgian composer – David Martijn.

Here is one of the tracks – A New Chapter – Reprise – with a haunting, descending chromatic line that regularly crops up throughout the other tracks and marks the pace of the film.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2022 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.