The Department of Economics at Drew University 
 Presents
 
 The Revival of Political Economy
 An all-day conference with distinguished scholars in Political
Economy
 
 Saturday February 9, 2008
9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Hall of Sciences, HS 4
Drew University, 36 Madison Ave., Madison, NJ 07940
Conference Schedule: http://depts.drew.edu/econ/RPE/ 
 
Nancy Folbre, author of The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family
Values (2001), andProfessor of Economics at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, presents “You Go, Girls! Feminism and
Political Economy.” The presentation explores the intellectual history
of feminism and economics, reviewing classic debates between liberal and
socialist feminists and emphasizing their relevance to the current day.
Dr. Folbre will provide an overview of feminist economics today with an
emphasis on the discourse of “care” and growing empirical research on
the “care sector” of the economy.
 
James K. Galbraith, author of Created Unequal (1998), Professor of
Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, and Senior Scholar at
the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, presents “The
Political-Economy of U.S.-China Relations” in which he examines the
mutual interdependence that now exists between the U.S. and China, the
peculiar - even unique - characteristics of China’s economic expansion,
the implications of China’s rise for the development strategies of other
countries, especially in Latin America, and the consequences of China’s
financial boom for its economic statistics, many of which including the
trade surplus are distorted and misunderstood as a result.
 
Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism (1972 and 2003),
Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of
Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC), and President of the Institute for the
Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), presents “The U.S. and
Global Bubble Economy” in which he explains the essence of the
increasingly financialized Bubble Economies and their impact on the
global payments system. Dr. Hudson argues that the United States enjoys
an international free ride by virtue of the dollar hegemony as key
currency in international payments, thus allowing the U.S. to run up
debts without international constraint. Dr. Hudson challenges the claim
that U.S. consumer demand is the “engine” that drives world economic
growth; a claim that is used as a threat to foreign central banks who
are forced to relend their inflow of surplus dollars to the U.S.
Treasury, otherwise their currencies will rise, reducing their
competitive position vis-à-vis dollar-area exporters. Foreign economies
therefore have held down their exchange rates by keeping their own
interest rates low, spurring financial and real estate bubbles of their
own. Dr. Hudson concludes that for the global economy, dollar hegemony
has become a form of international economic overhead.
 
Jan Kregel, Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard
College, and  Distinguished Research Professor at the Center for Full
Employment and Price Stability (UMKC), presents “Savings Gaps, External
Resources and Debt Crises in Latin America: Towards a New Model of
Development in Latin America.” Dr.Kregel questions the traditional
development theory which identifies the obstacles to development in the
lack of domestic resources and domestic savings in developing countries.
It thus supports reliance on external resources in the form of official
assistance and foreign borrowing. Latin America has followed this model
and the result has been a series of increasingly devastating debt
crises. In the 2005 Global Summit Outcome, the UN shifted emphasis to
give greater weight to domestic employment policy - one of the most
underutilized domestic resources in developing countries. After the 2001
crisis, Argentina has initiated a new approach based on producing
domestic growth before it attempts to return to borrowing in
international capital markets. Do these changes in emphasis represent
the basis for a New Model of Latin American development? 
 
This event is free and open to the public, and is co-sponsored by the
Economics Department, the Economics Club, and The Presidential
Initiative Fund of Drew University.
 
For more info please contact Dr. Fadhel Kaboub, 973-408-3764,
[log in to unmask] 
 
Fadhel Kaboub