Every Sunday beginning July 7th, 2024 at 3pm ET

Register for the course by clicking HERE, then hit ‘join group’.

The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 is the major economic event of the 21st century thus far, and continues to impact all dimensions of economic life. Join Class Unity as we explore the causes of the crisis so that we may better understand the nature of financial capitalism and the role of the state in managing its underlying instability.

Week 1. Money and the State

• Michael Hudson: The Archaeology of Money (2004)
• Pavlina R. Tcherneva:
  • Chartalism and the Tax-Driven Approach to Money (2007)
  • Money and Monetary Regimes (2018)
• L. Randall Wray, From the State Theory of Money to Modern Money Theory: An Alternative to Economic Orthodoxy (2014)
• [OPTIONAL] Stephanie (Bell) Kelton:
  • The Role of the State and the Hierarchy of Money (2001)
  • Do Taxes and Bonds Finance Government Spending? (2000)
• [Optional] Bank of England: Money Creation in the Modern Economy (2014)

Week 2. Introduction: General Financial History

• J.K. Galbraith: A Short History of Financial Euphoria

Week 3. How to Think about Financial Crisis I

• Cliff Bowman, “Marx’s Theory of Economic Crises”
• Karl Marx,
  • Capital, Volume III, “Development of the Law’s Internal Contradictions” (chapter 15, 349-75) 
  • Capital, Volume III, “Money Capital and Real Capital I” (chapter 30, 607-25, esp. 614-5)
  • Capital, Volume II (chapter 16, 391; chapter 20, 486-7)
  • Capital, Volume II (chapter 20, 544-5)
  • Theories of Surplus Value (MECW 31, 179-80)
  • Theories of Surplus Value (MECW 32, 131-164, 127-8, 246-8)
• [Optional] Michael Heinrich, An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Marx’s Capital (chapter 9, 169-178)
• [Optional] Simon Clarke, “Crisis Theory” (The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics. Edward Elgar: Northampton, MA, 2012)

Week 4. How to Think about Financial Crisis II (notes)

• Joseph Schumpeter: Real Analysis and Monetary Analysis (Excerpt: A History of Economic Analysis [1954], pp. 276-80)
• Foster & Catchings: The Dilemma of Thrift (1926)
• Irving Fisher: The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions (1933)
• John Maynard Keynes:
  • A Monetary Theory of Production (1933)
  • The General Theory of Employment (1937)
  • The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936),
    • Chapter 12: The State of Long-Term Expectation (pp. 156, 158-9, rest optional)
    • Chapter 16: Sundry Observations on the Nature of Capital (p. 210, rest optional)

Week 5. How to Think about Financial Crisis III (notes)

• Hyman Minsky:
  • The Financial Instability Hypothesis (1992)
  • Can ‘It’ Happen Again? (1982)
  • Back From the Brink (1988)
  • Financial Resources in a Fragile Financial Environment (1975)
  • The Breakdown of the 1960s Policy Synthesis (1981)
  • The Financial Instability Hypothesis (1977)
  • [Optional] Stabilizing an Unstable Economy (1986)

Week 6. Predictions of the 2008 GFC:

• Dean Baker
  • Recession Looms for the U.S. Economy in 2007 (2007)
• Steve Keen:
  • The Recession We Can’t Avoid? (2006)
  • [Optional] Predicting the ‘Global Financial Crisis’: Post-Keynesian Macroeconomics (2013)
• Michael Hudson:
  • The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse (2006)
  • [Optional videos]
    • Government Debt and Deficits Are Not the Problem
    • The History of Neoliberal Economics
    • The Economy and Neofeudalism
    • How We Got Junk Economics
• Ann Pettifor:
  • The Coming First World Debt Crisis (2003)
  • [Optional] We Can End the Despotism of Finance, at a Price (2014)

Weeks 7. Marxian Analyses I

• John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff: The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequence

Weeks 8. Marxian Analyses I

• John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff: The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequence Chapters 3-6

Week 9. Marxian Analyses II

• Robert Brenner: What is Good for Goldman Sachs is Good for America: The Origins of the Present Crisis (2009)

Week 10. Marxian Analyses III

• Costas Lapavitsas:
  • Financialized Capitalism: Crisis and Expropriation (2009)
  • The Financialization of Capitalism: Profiting without Producing (2013)
  • [Video] The Financialization of Capitalism (2015)
  • [Optional] Profiting without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All (Verso 2013)

Weeks 11-14. Marxian Analyses IV

• Michael Hudson, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy (2015)

EXTRA / OPTIONAL / RECOMMENDED

• Greta Krippner, 
  • The Financialization of the American Economy (2005)
  • Capitalizing on the Crisis: the political origins of the rise of finance (2011)
• Katharina Pistor:
  • A Legal Theory of Finance (2013)
  • Capitalism’s Global Rule (2019)
  • The Code of Capital (2019)
• Bradford Delong:
  • Republic of the Central Banker (2008)
  • Fiscal Policy and Full Employment (2014)
• Adam Tooze:
  • Crashed: How A Decade of Financial Crises Changed The World (2018)