Genius Hour Reflection

I watched Thomas Pickety's TED talk before last week's genius hour, and annotated it in my bibliography. He discussed the implications of his equation r > g which means rate of return on investment is always higher than inflation. The difference perpetuates and worsens wealth inequality. I didn't fully understand how he came to this equation from the video, so I revisited Capital to read a longer explanation. I am more convinced since I have seen his evidence, but to be fair it takes very little to convince me that capitalism perpetuates inequality.

Genius Hour Reflection

I was working on a the outline of the report on what causes my issue. While writing it, I hope to determine my gaps in sources. As such I started reading Capital by Thomas Pickety. There is a section that dealt with the role or Central Banks. Pickety believes it to be preventing financial collapse by creating out loans to socially-significant enough institutions. I am going to watch his TED talk as my documentary and annotate it for my bibliography for next class.

Genius Hour Reflection

I began reading The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. I was reading about how the federal reserve formed in the same way a trust or cartel would form. The competing industry leaders -- predominantly the representatives of Morgan and Rockefeller -- formed a state-sponsored monopoly. It demonstrates that the manifest function of Federal Reserve was to stabilize the economy and promote business. However, the latent functions were to stop growing competition of new banks, obtain method to create money for lending, control all bank reserves, and have the american people deal with the inevitable burden through bailouts.