Discussion Nights and Soup-making

The past few days have been very interesting.  On Monday, I attended the World Leaders Forum at Columbia to hear Joseph Stiglitz and George Soros.  I spent Tuesday afternoon interviewing and then barely made it to listen to Eric Foner speak about Reconstruction in Mississippi.  And now tonight, as I am writing, I'm attempting to replicate my Aunt Claudia's chicken noodle soup.  I consider all four tasks equally as daunting.

Stiglitz and Soros on Globalization

This talk focused on the problems of globalization, including a fundamentally flawed system of intellectual property rights, poor government, and an asymmetry between the movement of capital and the movement of labor.  The result is a trade system that is incredibly unfair to those in developing countries.  Globalization tends to reward those with skills and assets (which number very few in developing countries).  Stiglitz pointed out that the underlying principles of globalization make several quesitonable assumptions, including the "everybody wins" theory of free trade. Much of this is due to the fact that economic globalization has outpaced political globalization. Free trade would be nice, but is not politically feasible in wealthy countries because their unskilled workers would see drastically reduced wages.  Therefore, the wealthy countries create policies (like the WTO Uruguay Round) that leave developing countries bearing almost all of the risk of globalization.

Foner on Reconstruction

The book discussed was a work of popular history entitled, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War.  It was written by Nicholas Lemann, the Dean of the Journalism School at Columbia.  It dealt primarily with an armed wing of the Democratic party during the Reconstruction era and the fall of Reconstruction in Mississippi in 1875--specifically, calling Republican party meetings "negro uprisings" and dispersing them as such.  Lemann also spoke of the realities behind the coming of Jim Crow and cited C. Vann Woodward as a major influence. 

Foner spoke of how much of the American South still focuses on an old, rather racist view of Reconstruction. 

   

Well, that was exhausting.  I'm off to bed!

Expense Report

Day 21:

• Barnes and Noble, $30+
• Books at the World Leaders Forum, $38

Day 22:

• Lunch from a street vendor, $2.50

Day 23:

• Fairway Market,