ECONOMY
Burchfield Penney to host conference on avoiding another recession
Published: October 04, 2009, 12:30 am
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For three days this week, scientists will take over one of Buffalo’s brightest arts venues. But the arts will also inform the discussion of economic theory.
A weekend of academic panels focusing on what caused the current recession, and what can be done to prevent future ones, will be bookended by artistic works that address the plight of people who suffered through the Great Depression.
Buffalo State College’s Burchfield Penney Arts Center will host the Fourth bi-annual Cross-Border Post Keynesian Conference on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The conference is slated to attract economists from across the United States and Canada to discuss modern theories on what causes economies to fail and what steps can and should be taken to prevent financial collapse.
Conference organizer Ted Schmidt, an associate professor of economics at Buffalo State, said the “post Keynesian” in the title is a reference to a growing school of economic thought that holds that the work of John Maynard Keynes, widely regarded as the greatest economic thinker of the 20th century, has been mangled into mainstream theories that understate the need for government action to prevent market economies from careening over the cliff.
Most so-called Keynesian theorists, Schmidt said, cling to the idea that markets are mostly self-regulating and that only rarely — as in the recent fiscal bailouts of banks and other large financial institutions — must governments step in with “pump-priming” infusions of capital.
“Macroeconomics sort of took off from that and never looked back,” Schmidt said.
Post Keynesian thought, on the other hand, holds that global financial markets are inherently unstable and require more active government management to prevent another collapse of the size of the Great Depression of the 1930s. It’s great guru is Hyman Minsky, an economist whose works fell out of favor in the decade since his death but have gained a new currency as economies across the globe have teetered on the brink of failure.
Among the presenters at the conference will be L. Randall Wray, a student of Minsky’s who now teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Joelle Leclaire, a Buffalo State economics teacher who was a student of Wray’s.
Portions of the conference, including the artistic parts, are open to the public at no charge. Thinking economically, Schmidt noted that incorporating artistic presentations into the conference allowed organizers to have the use of the new Burchfield Penney facility for free.
The free-to-the-public portion includes the opening night presentation of Tim Robbins’ 1999 film “Cradle Will Rock,” a dramatization of a 1937 controversy over a stage musical about the plight of working people that was all but banned for its perceived leftist sympathies. The showing at 7 p. m. Thursday in the Burchfield Penney auditorium will be introduced by Buffalo State music Professor Charles Mancuso.
Mancuso will also be the host for the closing night dramatic presentation titled “. . . Whose Names Are Unknown.” The multimedia presentation of songs, stories and images from the Great Depression and the New Deal will begin at 8 p. m. Saturday.
Earlier that day, at 2 p. m., Mark Goldman of the Buffalo State History Department will present a lecture titled “The Great Depression and Buffalo’s Arts Culture.” And, at 3:30 p. m., Buffalo State faculty members will discuss nothing less than, “The Future of Capitalism.”
Participation in the rest of the conference requires registration. Registration is $50 — free to Buffalo State students, faculty and staff—and includes lunch on Friday. A banquet that night is an additional $30.
gpyle@buffnews.com
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