The Politics of Finance and Financial Crises

Catalog description

We explores politics around management of international money and financial crises. Although it has been argued that management of money is best left in the hands of dispassionate, technocratic experts, we explore the political foundations of national money and international monetary affairs. The course begins with an introductory overview of national and global currencies, monetary policy choices and recent history of international monetary system. The second half of the semester will focus on crisis events, starting with causes of financial crises, and moving to key crisis moments Latin American debt crises, emerging market crises of the 1990s, 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis and the Euro crisis. The last weeks of the course reflect upon the current crisis that has emerged with the Covid-19 pandemic, and its implications for the global political economy and future of the dollar in the international monetary