In January of 2010 the Rethinking Capitalism Initiative will launch under the auspices of the University of California. The Initiative’s mandate focuses on the development of critical ideas in finance and political economy. Our fellowships support original research, mini-grants engage students to do creative and meaningful work, conferences and events weave together a community of intellectuals from diverse affiliations pursuing common questions.
In the early 1970’s a student and a professor sharing a politics course at UCSC began a conversation about the future of capitalism. What made this particular conversation unique was that it continued for over thirty years. The student went on to become an early explorer of quantitative finance at the Stanford Research Institute, he moved on to found Alcentra, a global asset management firm sold to Bank of New York Mellon Corp in 2006. The professor dedicated a lifetime to studying and teaching topics of social and economic justice. Those conversations became a friendship, a collaboration, and eventually took an institutional form in this Initative. Stephen Bruce and Prof. Robert Meister invite you to join in this exploration.
Three decades of profound advances in financial economics have transformed global markets, but have had relatively little impact on the social sciences and humanities. As a result, scholars face a dearth of intellectual resources that interpret, critique, defend, transform and explain the political phenomenon of derivatives. The Crisis of 2008 set many of these issues in stark relief, but marked neither the end nor the beginning of the end. The Initiative focuses on the intellectual and policy issues that will haunt us long after the initial reactions to the crisis fade.
Particular attention is paid to the evolution and regulation of derivatives. The model for valuing derivatives has become a new way of understanding capitalism as a production of new property (a commodity) by means of contract alone. Scholars in the social sciences and humanities are seeking to understand the difference that this new shape of capital has made to their fields. Within the minutiae of esoteric financial instruments lie social, political, and religious assumptions that remain largely unexamined to this day. The role of derivatives in the economy is currently being publicly questioned, criticized, and legislated. Economists are seeking to better understand the cultural, institutional, and moral dimensions of their work.
The Rethinking Capitalism Initiative aims to connect those who are technically adept at the new financial technologies with scholars of culture, institutions, ethics and even theology. We support original research in political economy and the social study of finance.
Three decades of profound advances in financial economics have transformed global markets, but have had relatively little impact on the social sciences and humanities. As a result, scholars face a dearth of intellectual resources that interpret, critique, defend, transform and explain the political phenomenon of derivatives. The Crisis of 2008 set many of these issues in stark relief, but marked neither the end nor the beginning of the end. The Initiative focuses on the intellectual and policy issues that will haunt us long after the initial reactions to the crisis fade.