Alternative Federal Budget Roundtable: Can Canada Escape a Lost Decade?

As part of the consultations undertaken in preparation of our forthcoming Alternative Federal Budget, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives hosted an economist roundtable, The Global Economic Crisis: Can Canada Escape a Lost Decade? on January 26, 2012. The event brought together several leading Canadian economists to address the appropriate fiscal policy response to Canada’s anemic economic recovery, as well as three internationally recognized authorities who shared their perspectives on the nature of the global economic crisis, how it’s likely to unfold, and obstacles to reform.

Click on the sessions below to watch online (via CPAC):

Keynote I: Perspectives on the global crisis and what to do 

Speakers: 

  • Yanis Varoufakis (PhD Essex) is the director of Political Economy division, department of Economic Sciences, University of Athens. He is the author of The Global Minotaur: America, the true origins of the financial crisis, and the future of the world economy (2011).
  • Stephany Griffith-Jones (PhD Cambridge) is Financial Markets Program Director at the Institute for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University; professorial fellow Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex. She is co-editor with José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph Stiglitz of Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis (2010). 

Panel I: Canadian dimension of crisis and assessment of the policy response 

Panelists: Patti Croft, Alice Nakamura, Mario Seccareccia, and Jim Stanford

Moderator: Althia Raj

Keynote II: Perspective on the U.S. and the global crisis, and the way forward

Speaker:

  • Thomas Palley (PhD Yale) is Schwartz Economic Growth Fellow at the New America Foundation, Washington DC. He is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times of London Economists’ Forum, and his most recent project is Economics for Democratic & Open Societies.

Panel II: External environment, domestic structural weaknesses, and the path to sustained economic recovery

Panelists: Roy Culpepper, Andrew Jackson, Brenda Spotton Visano, and Eric Pineault

Moderator: Norma Greenaway

Offices: