The Commanding Heights Documentary

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSesR-_qOrE Topics to choose from. But you can think of your own topic which should be related to the Commanding Heights Documentary • What happens when governments control or dominate a national economy? • Why have most countries in the world turned back toward free-market capitalism after 80 years of experimentation with socialism and communism? • Why did so many socialist economies fail? • What are the benefits and drawbacks of the capitalist economic system? • What happens when command economies transform into market economies? How is the transition best undertaken? • What happens when national governments restrict their domestic economies from open participation in (and dependence on) foreign trade? • What caused the collapse of the first age of the global free market (in 1914)? • What has a century taught us about the specific problems of market economies -- speculative "bubbles," crashes, underemployment, and unequal distribution of wealth? • What have we learned about the effects of imposing price and wage controls, of deficit spending, trade tariffs, and subsidies? • What have we learned about the effects of government regulation of markets and privately owned industries? • What have we learned about government use of fiscal vs. monetary policy in promoting economic growth? • In designing new rules for the evolving global economy, how should we address the risks of economic contagion, currency and debt crises, and other dangers to peace and stability? • As global capital markets have opened up and investors can invest or withdraw support from entire national economies at will, what has been the impact of "market discipline" on national economic and political autonomy?