Vampire Squids, Tea Parties, and the 99%: The 2008 Financial Crisis in American Culture
Vampire Squids, Tea Parties, and the 99%: The 2008 Financial Crisis in American Culture
(23) Vampire Squids, Tea Parties, and the 99%: The 2008 Financial Crisis in American Culture - Jeff Roche, Department of History
Until four years ago, the mysterious world of global banking was mostly ignored by a culture far more attuned to partisan political bickering, sports obsessions, and day-to-day pop culture ephemera. But in a matter of weeks, a system designed to create wealth collapsed and trillions of dollars disappeared. Entire nations went bankrupt, millions of hard-working people found out their retirement savings had been wiped out, tens of thousands found their homes in foreclosure, millions were thrown out of work. The U.S. government spent trillions and trillions of dollars to stave off a complete collapse of the national economy. In response to the crisis, American politics changed; from the right a powerful new force within the Republican Party, the Tea Party Movement, demanded immediate cuts in government spending. On the left, another movement, Occupy Wall Street, demanded greater regulation of the financial industry. What happened? In this seminar, taught by an American historian, we will examine the causes (both historical and immediate), consequences, and legacies of the 2008 Financial Crisis. This is neither an economics nor a finance course, but rather an investigation into the most important historical event of the new century. We will read contemporary accounts, examine films (including Margin Call, written and directed by College of Wooster graduate J.C. Chandor), dig into the growing literature of the crisis, follow several blogs dedicated to explaining modern finance and economics, and explore the history of money, banking, and politics.