Lecture: The 2008 global economic crisis

This coming Saturday, December 20, 2008 I am giving a lecture on the global economy as it is today. The lecture will be held at the invitation of the Debate Club of Tel Aviv University (as part of the preparatory activities of the club's team going to the World Championship in Ireland), but the general public is invited.

• price: Admission is free, but prior registration is required (subject to availability)
• Place: 12 Barrett St., Apartment 5, Ramat Aviv (How to get?)
• time: Mochash, from 18:00 to 22:00 (estimated)

Table of Contents

The economic crisis

In recent months, the world (including those of us who have never been interested in the subject) discovered some new things in economics - it turned out that banks holding billions of dollars can go bankrupt overnight, it turned out that conservative economists are ready to throw out all the laws and write new ones in their place, we learned to use the number "trillion" routinely , and we acquired many more insights that we probably would have preferred not to acquire.

The first part of the lecture will explain the causes of the crisis, the strategies used by different countries to deal with it, and the possible scenarios for the future.

environmental quality

It's a bit hard to remember now, but last summer oil went up about 1501 TP4T per barrel, a global shortage emerged as a clear and immediate danger, the need to save energy gave the environmental movement the strength that no pollution, extinction or global warming could give: suddenly everyone started worrying about fuel consumption and the depletion of natural resources. The economic crisis dropped prices and may have distracted many people who planned to act on the environmental issue but are now busy with economic survival (Barack Obama, for example...).

The second part of the lecture will deal with how the oil crisis caused the economic crisis and the consequences of the economic crisis on the environmental struggle.

The rise of China and the decline of America

It is very possible that in fifty years the two crises we experienced - the rise in the price of oil and the collapse of the financial markets - will be seen as just another milestone in a huge process in the scope of which China is growing to become the leading world power and on the way drawing oil, and steel, dollars and stocks from all over the world. Along the way there are many more obstacles that the Chinese will have to face such as how to guarantee a pension for a quarter of a billion old people when each old couple has only one child, and how to guarantee a health system for a billion people who are in the habit of breathing soot, drinking arsenic and eating food with God knows what additives in it.

The last part of the lecture will deal with the status of China today and the economic, political and environmental consequences of its growth

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