The crisis - podcasts galore

If the economic crisis is on your mind and you want to listen in podcasts what people have to say about it, you have a million options to go. On the LSE events podcast, there was a lecture on the subject that had a spectacularly large audience turning up. This triggered the remark: 'We should be using the words Credit Crunch in each of our lecture titles'. (Central Banking and the Credit Crunch)

Apart from the question how Central Banking has in one way or another contributed to the current downturn, the lecture makes a thorough assessment of central banking throughout the world today. Frankly, I wasn't aware there were so many different models and had no idea that the model I knew best, that of The Netherlands, is rather the exception than the rule. Needless to say, lessons are learned and changes as a response to the crisis are expected. The speaker, Howard Davies, reveals that the US is considering adapting to the UK model, while the UK tends to develop towards the US model. So, if you are confused, you are with the best of them.

If you weren't gloomy enough about the prospects, here is a remark made at the podcast Media Matters. Bob McChesney talks with guests and frequently with listeners calling in about current affairs. In the recorded (hence without callers) issue of November 23rd, the outcome of the US election were analyzed and guest John Nichols almost casually made the remark: "We do not yet feel the credit card crisis." So there may be even more bad news to come.

However, there may be also a very different angle to take on the crisis. This is proposed by Speaking of Faith in a short conversation with Rachel Naomi Remen (exclusively on the Speaking of Faith podcast). Remen takes the philosophical inroad: a crisis is a moment of change. This crisis is focusing us on questions we need to ask and reorient ourselves. The happy note then is that crisis is the chance for renewal and betterment. Remen suggests that the credit crisis forces us to ask what we trust. We have been trusting our money and our investments, yet we find this was wrong. This is the moment to single out the stars that we sail by and she adds: the stars characteristically only come out in darkness. So, we may also be happy with our crisis.

More LSE Events:
Desiring Walls,
The Post-American World,
Reparing Failed States,
Europe and the Middle East,
Nuts and bolts of empire.

More Speaking of Faith:
Listening Generously,
The Sunni-Shia Divide and the future of Islam,
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Karen Armstrong,
Wangari Maathai.