Please see the letter below from our adviser. Contact us for questions and comments, or join our WP&DSS meeting on Fridays for direct discussions.

We’re planning a series and will start with a general panel presentation/discussion made up of 5 or so faculty.  We’d like the panel to address three aspects of the financial crisis from three disciplinary perspectives: 1) econ/finance, 2) political and 3) social justice.  The discussion would be addressing very basic questions, such as:  What caused this and is there really a crisis?  Should we bailout Wall Street or not?  Should we regulation or deregulate financial markets? 

We also decided to have the panel make two presentations/discussions.  One in the day aimed at campus community (students, staff and faculty).  One in the evening aimed at both the on and off campus community.  Our idea was to have 3 to 5 “experts” give a brief talk from their perspective and then respond to questions from the audience. We’d like this to happen the week of Oct 13^th.

We would also like to have follow-up sessions that would go into greater depth from discipline specific perspectives.  The ideas/disciplines that were tossed around are:

• Basic introduction to finance and the role it plays in the economy
• The history of depressions
• The psychology of investing/speculation
• The political implications for the upcoming election
• The impact on education
• The impact on women
• International implications of the crisis