Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy
Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a PBS documentary series based on the book under the same name by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. The series provides an understanding of globalization, world trade, and economic development, including the forces and ideas that have shaped the present global economic system. The first episode "The Battle of Ideas" takes a look at two major competing ideas about the world economy: the "planned economy" favored by John Maynard Keynes and the "free market" favored by Friedrich von Hayek. The second episode "The Agony of Reform" focuses on how reform played out in several countries - Russia, Poland, India, Bolivia, and Chile - as they lived through the upheavals of rapid change. The third and final episode "The New Rules of the Game" examines the promise and perils of globalization in the 1990s.
| Episode 1 - The Battle of Ideas |
Episode 1 - The Battle of Ideas
Looking at two major competing ideas about the world economy: the "planned economy" favored by John Maynard Keynes and the "free market" favored by Friedrich von Hayek, this episode tells the story of how, for half a century, the world moved toward more government control - from the centrally planned economies of the communist world to the United States' regulated capitalism - and then began to move away.
Episode 2 - The Agony of Reform
This episode focuses in detail on how reform played out in several countries - Russia, Poland, India, Bolivia, and Chile - as they lived through the upheavals of rapid change, dealing with both the new freedoms and the new dangers of privatization, deregulation, and freewheeling competition.
Episode 3 - The New Rules of the Game
This episode examines the promise and perils of globalization in the 1990s, focusing on the story of President Bill Clinton's embrace of free-trade policies, the challenges the world's leaders faced in taming the virulent contagion of financial collapse in the developing world, and the violent debate over globalization that suddenly surfaced in the Seattle protests.
| Related Links |
| Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, first published as The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World in 1998. |
| Meltdown: The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse This is a four-part CBC documentary series written and directed by Terence Mckenna, telling the story of the bankers who crashed the world, the leaders who struggled to save it and the ordinary families who got crushed. |
| The Ascent of Money The Ascent of Money is a six-part documentary series presented by Niall Ferguson, examining the long history of money, credit, and banking. |
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| The Age of Uncertainty At an early point they settled on the title "Age of Uncertainty" to reflect the sharp contrast between the great certainty in 19th century economic thought with the much less assured views in modern times. |