 Okay, as we've only got an hour, I'm going to start and just let you know introduce everything slowly and let people arrive. So my name is Fran Boyd and I'm the Executive Director of Positive Money and chairing today's webinar that we're hosting on how racism built our money and banking system. So we're really excited to be doing, doing some more webinars as we, many of us still find ourselves working from home. So we've got three coming up. This is the first of three that we're hosting this autumn exploring topics of race, inequality, debt and unfair money, banking and wider economic system. So the next one, which I'll remind you of at the end will be in a couple of weeks time at the same time 1230 to 130. So we're hoping people can join over their lunch break if that's possible. And that will be entitled debt inequality and COVID-19, the perfect storm. So looking forward to that one. So for those of you who don't know positive money, we are a nonprofit that was set up after the financial crash 10 years ago. And our mission is to reform money and banking so that enables a fair, democratic and sustainable economy, one which we find ourselves very far away from today. And this year we have seen huge kind of upheaval and we're keen to delve into some of those topics over the course of this webinar series. So I really welcome people to drop into the chat who they are and where they're from joining. We've previously had a really international audience. And so we're keen to know who you are and where you're from. So don't don't hold back. We've got over 150 people so far and hope and I'm sure more coming as well. So to introduce today, this is how racism built our money and banking system. And we saw in May this year, George Floyd dying of being lynched over a $20 bill. And this feels like a symbol, not just to kind of generalize racism, but of institutionalized financial structures that discriminate and exclude people of color in our economy today. And whilst this summer, positive money did welcome the Bank of England and other financial institutions apologizing for their ties with the slave trade. A simple apology is quite easy to do and obviously not not really enough. So much of the wealth and size of our oversized financial sector and city of London was built on this on the slave trade. So we must look deeper into the role of our money and banking system and its history to truly understand what actions are needed to address racial injustices and racial inequalities that we see in terms of the glaring racial wealth gap and income gap that is present in the UK today. We see those financially excluded in our money and banking system are not a random selection of citizens but disproportionately Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. So it's a huge topic and we don't have long, but luckily we do have a really fantastic panel of experts. I'm really excited about joining us today to share their insights and thoughts before we open it up to the wider audience. So we'll start with Kai Hinday Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. His research focuses on resistance to racism and grassroots organizations and his latest book Back to Black Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century was published in 2018. He also wrote Resisting Racism, Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement in 2013 and is the editor of Blackness in Britain book series with Zed Books. He's also written opinion pieces for Guardian, Independent, Washington Post, CNN and is the founder of the Harambee Organization of Black Unity and co-chair of the Black Studies Association. We will then hear from Dr Jerovia Jafri, who is a lecturer in international political economy at City University in London. She studies financial development in the global south, including inclusive finance payment systems and impact investing strategies. Her doctoral research studied how shadow banking practices and networks shaped inclusive finance in Pakistan. Her PhD degrees from the University of Toronto in Canada and Shahid Zafiqa Ali Bruto Institute of Science and Technology in Pakistan has several years of work experience in the financial sector itself. And then we'll be hearing from Dr Karolina Alves, Joan Robinson Research Fellow in heterodox economics at Gerton College University of Cambridge, a co-founder of diversifying and decolonizing economics. She is the editor of the development economics blog and sits on the rebuilding macroeconomics advisory board and the Progressive Economy Forum Council. So really excited to hear from all of you. But before I hand over to speakers, I just want to again encourage people to also as well as saying where they're from in the chat to feel free to start sharing questions in the Q&A. Do our best to get through some of those. Looks like we've got some people from Canada joining us at 4.30am, some people from Chester and Bristol in the UK. So excited to hear more about where our audience is coming from. So I'll hand over to Kai Hinday to kick us off. All right. Good afternoon. I guess it is. Yes. Well, it depends where you are, I suppose. So thanks for the invitation and thanks for spending your lunch. Lunchtime with us. I'm still not 100% used to talking to myself in my front room. So bear with me. I'm just going to give a kind of very brief overview. I mean, I think one of the, so I've just finished a book which comes out in February. It's called The New Age of Empire. Racism and colonialism still rule the world. And the whole premise of this book is built around a video we did for The Guardian a few years ago called The West is Built on Racism. And, you know, when we think about any question about how does racism feature into any area of social life, which you just understand that racism is the literal founding stone of this political and economic system. So there is no corner which is separate from that and the money in banking system is certainly not at all. In fact, the money in banking system is absolutely at the heart of that in every single way. The idea that capitalism is racism probably has, hopefully has a lot of purchase nowadays. An excellent book in that regard is Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson. But really, if you actually look at the development of capitalism, the development of the Western economy that we're currently in, you know, racism is this hallmark. Racism is what starts it. Racism is what fans it and racism is still what runs it. And the economy is really important in that. So in the book, you know, so I knew this before I wrote the book and then I did all the research for the book and the devil really is in the detail into just how important finance and capital and wealth generation was to and how slavery, colonialism and racism was to how we generate all the wealth that we currently have that is in our finance system at all. So if we go back to the, you know, the founding moment, the dawning of the West would have to be Columbus's sale to the Americas in 1492. We know the ocean blue was something we talked about in school. We forgot to talk about the fact that he was also one of Europe's first slave traders and genocidal, genocidal tyrant who was responsible for the deaths of literally for the deaths of millions of people. But that movement to the West and why we actually call it one of 12. I'm not sure this is why we call it the West, but it certainly is. It should be why we call it the West. That movement to the West was really important in terms of generating the necessary wealth to what we have now. So in 1492, Europe was not ahead of the world like we think kind of think of the idea that, you know, Europe and the Western and it was almost naturally the leader, the most wealthy, the leader in technology, etc. At this point, this was not the case. In fact, Europe was coming out of a dark age and may have been the only part of the world that was in a dark age at that point in time. And the founding of the Americas is hugely important to generate the wealth necessary for the West to Europe's take over for the West to come into being. And the pillars of that. I mean, yes, you can talk about industrial revolution, you can talk about politics and all those kind of things. But the real pillars of that were the genocide in the Americas, the genocide so large killed up to 98% of the native populations in different parts of the of the Americas, but genocide so large that it actually warmed the earth. I still don't really understand how that worked. But that was that was the impact of the genocide in the Americas, the amount of people died about tens of million probably about 70 million people. And then that was followed by the enslavement of again tens of millions of Africans who were born over from Africa, literally turned into subhuman animal like Shatel who could be treated literally with a monetary value, right, and traded to build the commodities Now commodities here important, because the first thing that was firstly the first jet driver of a slave trade in the Americas was the Portuguese and Spanish you trying to find gold right gold is such an important commodity gold and silver. And it was this golden silver rush that was the first thing which generated slavery and which started to build the wealth, and which the West was able to write. And what they did is was the gold and silver was the trade with the East, the East at this point was definitely more advanced Africa was certainly more advanced as well, along the story there. But this golden silver trade with the East managed to enrich the wealth might build the West and all the countries in the West in Europe would even though they weren't necessarily directly involved in slavery they were benefiting from this trading commodities over into over into the And this is where you start to see that the West begins to emerge begins to become more preeminent, and then it is in the conversion of Africans into into capital, right. And that is, that's what allows this to happen right through literally turning us into into into into a stock into into a month into a lease off into a into a form of economic exchange. And the what really kicks off Western development though, is when there's a shift from kind of gold and silver into the other commodities like sugar and cotton really in particular cotton becomes a huge and important commodity which is traded around etc etc. And slave plantations generate so much wealth of 300 years, and all this wealth is bought into Europe and it's and becomes the works above the world and becomes a center of production etc. And all this wealth is the wealth is used to make Europe permanent they can't be colonialism without slavery, they can't be slavery without genocide, they can't be the West without these terrible forms of colonial violence, which underpin all the ways in which that wealth was was created. And then once you have that will that allows you to have the banking system is not coincidental the bank system is tied very very neatly into slavery and colonialism in terms of its development. That's by design, once you have this wealth what do you do with it once you have monetary forms of exchange what do you do. If you look at even some of the language that's used stocks, bonds, which would be telling you they were reminiscent of the time. And that wealth is the wealth that was absolutely essential to driving modern industry. The Birmingham where I currently am and live is you know famous for industrial revolution people like James what Matthew Bolton, where did they get where did they get their wealth from to invest and develop etc etc from the profits from slavery. You know the first thing that was produced the first thing that went through the spinning through the through James what steam engine, it was refined it was just sugar refinery in the in the Caribbean. So, you know you have always wealth and you have a banking system that is then put into to deal with the wealth right to deal with it when does it go how does it use what what what kind of system is set up to deal with that. Now, interestingly the bank I'm kind of writing on a bit earlier we come up in the Q&A, but I want to kind of focus on the Bank of England for a second because the Bank of England did apologize for its role in slavery but kind of ignored his actual role in slavery. The Bank of England's role in slavery wasn't just that it was it had some, well, almost all of its first founders were slave owners or had money from slavery that's how much money there wasn't in in in how much money that wealth there was from slavery in Britain at that time. But actually, you couldn't have slavery without the banking finance system you couldn't have slavery without loans from banks to to so they could float and people could could actually start slave trading businesses you couldn't have slavery without insurance, thinking about insurance thinking about loads of London, you couldn't you couldn't have slavery without insurance mechanism. Some of these mechanisms actually come about precisely because of something like slave trade. And the one area where the Bank of England was totally myopic in its in its statement was you know after slavery is abolished in the in Britain and the colonies. It's abolished because the British government pays the biggest still is this day the biggest amount of money the government's ever paid for anything, which was 100 billion pounds 5% of GDP in 1834 5% GDP now is about 100 billion pounds 100 billion pounds paid to the slave owners as compensation for their losses right so this huge transfer of wealth was given to the slave owners in order for them to be benevolent enough to end the system of slavery. Now, that's important because when was this money paid off paid off in so sorry the sorry the government paid off the money they take a loan to pay this off it was so huge 40% of the British government's budget at the time, and they took this loan from where the Bank of England and only paid this loan off in 2015, which means that myself the my grandmother, my grandfather, my great great, and my descendants of the slave have actually been paying off compensation slave owners until 2015, which just tells you how this isn't something in the past this is very much something which is still with us the legacy of very much to the life, and the wealth from slavery is still definitely with us and colonialism and also so is the poverty as well, and it still shapes the modern world. I will stop there. Thank you so much. I think I ended up spontaneously hand over to to barrier now. Yeah thanks that that's really interesting and very relevant to to my own notes actually so I just wanted to sort of begin by by drawing everyone's attention to this recent report from the running me trust it's called the color of money it's a report about racial inequality and and and some numbers from it just to give you a sense right so we know from this report that black African and Bangladesh she households, for instance have 10 times less wealth than white British people. And this is a there's very useful analysis over here because it's it's sort of at this granular level it sort of explains how well the accumulation in the past, such as through buying property. And then sort of other assets can can explain the uneven structural wealth in the UK today. But what I want to sort of specifically draw attention to just just for a little bit is the the actual title of the report right so it's called the color of money. How racial inequalities obstruct a fair and resilient economy right and that's fine that sort of covers exactly what the reports about. An assumption from that sort of title is that inequality sort of stand in the way of a better economy they stand in the way of a fair or more resilient economy. But I think another way to look at this might be to sort of see how the economy itself stands in the way of a fairer, more resilient more, you know, even or equal rather society right. And this is the context in which I want to discuss a specific part of the economy right and that part of the economy is the financial system right now here in the UK. We've seen after you know with the black lives movement after the murder of George Floyd that there has been, you know, an interest in some I'm welcome and you know often uncomfortable decisions about about slavery and colonialism right and that that's, you know, essentially what kind is been talking about right how how it's very it's impossible really to separate institutions that that still persist in our unity influential like the city of London for instance, from history of colonialism and slavery right and even though slavery was abolished in the 19th century, we see that racial inequality still persist right and what we what we have essentially is a financial system that has not only not is not only a product of these inequalities, but has also constantly designed and redesigned itself to benefit from these inequalities right. So, just to give you a little sort of examples from the US right which is quite relevant. There is. So if you look back at the history of sort of read the racial wealth gap and accumulation. You see that there was this phenomenon shortly after the abolition of slavery of black banks right now what is a black bank a black bank was essentially a bank that served only black people and why do you need banks like that because they couldn't go to banks that were you know owned or established for white people right so there's this constant for for the black communities in the US to access very basic things like credit or just you know even to sort of place their savings in a deposit right and because these black banks were were owned by black people who were not as wealthy or influential or well connected as their white counterparts they were constantly failing so there's this constant cycle of people losing their savings and and being devastated and and losing confidence essentially in in the financial system right and then the sort of system continues into more recent years with this phenomenon of redlining right now redlining for those of you don't know is basically just you know making certain parts of the map read and those red points indicate where essentially where banks shouldn't lend so they're considered high risk areas and you if you're a banker you don't want to issue mortgages to people coming from who live in those areas right so where whereas it might be illegal to discriminate on the basis of race and refuse someone a mortgage on that basis, it's not illegal to sort of make an assessment on, you know the neighborhood there they're sort of buying property and right and there was this constant fear among in white neighborhoods to not become redlined right to not sort of become a ghetto and every time a black family would sort of move in there was this issue about house prices falling right and there's and it's all circular right because you've you've bought this property for wealth accumulation but but you've actually seen that prices in the neighborhood fall so it's this sort of system of wealth accumulation being skewed and uneven depending on on race right and that's the US example and what we what we see with redlining is this this phenomenon of reverse redline redlining right and that actually relates very closely to what we've seen in the UK so reverse redlining was when when you see that in certain areas where regular banks refuse to operate and offer sort of insurance mortgage is lending and so on, you see institutions like payday lenders pop up right so these are predatory institutions they're exploitative, and they're obviously going to charge a much higher rate with a, you know, smaller suite of services, just because they know they can get away with it right just because they know that regular banks are not going to lend in certain areas so that's where they pop up right and we see the same phenomenon in the UK right and now to really understand why that happens we want to get into what you know the structure of banks is like what is their profit model right so we saw this phenomenon in the 1990s. And there are a number of financial geographers who sort of covered this quite extensively so there's the work of Gary Dimsky particularly, which is very relevant and they talk about this phenomenon called financial abandonment and financial infrastructure withdrawal, where you see that, you know, over like a certain period, there's a large scale closure of many banks, and a lot of people find that they have to travel sort of five, six miles even more to get to the nearest bank branch right, and what happens in this sort of, and these areas particularly that they're working class areas there are large communities of migrants over there so it's, it's sort of people who are already disadvantaged who are being sort of further disadvantaged by the system, and in this sort of environment you have lots of payday lenders, institutions like long and so on sort of pop up and start taking advantage of these populations and why, why has this happened this has happened, essentially because there's been a very strong shift in the way banking is done in the way banking banks have designed themselves and in the way the financial structure sort of evolved right and so if you really want to sort of see this shift I think a really good resource is this film called It's a Wonderful Life, it's often on at Christmas and then the main character in that is this guy called George Bailey who runs this sort of community bank and he's struggling to sort of save the bank from being closed or or being taken over by profit seekers right and in that you sort of get the sense that the bank is there not just to make profit but it's part of a community right so collapse of a bank like a run on a bank would mean a collapse of a community because not only have people place their savings over there but those savings have gone on to fund people's businesses their enterprises their companies and their livelihoods essentially right but that model has is disappearing it's to a large extent it's already gone and and in that model which we had in the UK as well you have this sort of arrangement where banks are keen to get not only depositors but also people to lend to so they want people to put their money in the bank but they also want to use that money to lend on to people so you're constantly building relationships. Now the contemporary model has has shifted right so we've seen the shift from what was sometimes called originate to hold OTD to sorry OTH to OTD which is originate to distribute and banks now instead of lending the money and looking for profit like through that model are sort of more interested in sorry I can hear an echo. I'm close to that should be okay now you've got one minute left by the way. Almost done and so rather than lend to individuals or companies banks are now sort of able to just make investments right so they invest in another company and then that company invests somewhere else and then they break it up and they turn that investment into something else and you know that investment might be for instance in subprime mortgages right and then we saw what happened with that right so that not only are they contributing to the system that's quite exploitative and unstable they've essentially sort of lost interest in cultivating any kind of relationship with the community or any sort of geographical orientation right. Now that's that's sort of the UK context or or described really what we haven't what we know as an Anglo American model but there's a global context as well right because these investments are often outside of the UK right so a lot of the money that a depositor might depositors might place in the UK winds up outside the UK and it's going to fund initiatives like for instance microfinance impact investing and so on right and now the question is why why are clients abroad often in sort of for emerging developing countries interested in in these funds from the UK right why why I have their own financial systems not been able to sort of cater to this need right. And then when you once you get into that you see that there's this entire sort of architecture infrastructure infrastructure of regulation that prevents them from doing so right so banks. In smaller countries are prevented from lending to who they choose there there's something called a set of basil regulations there's also another set of regulations from the G seven under the financial action task force. And these are very very restrictive right so it's much easier for them to sort of get money from a fund, turn that into a microfinance loan and lend it to poor people in their own country rather than sort of generate that their own system. And you know another third sort of feature which we can talk about later is this sort of connection between the global financial industry and and this massive offshore financial infrastructure so where you have tax havens and where sort of large corporations avoid tax which would otherwise be you know used for redistributive purposes or for public more accessible public services. Yeah, that was a huge amount of information thank you so much. I'm going to hand over to our last speaker Carolina. Thank you friend so yeah and thank you very much for this invitation is amazing and timely even so I'm very happy to be here and trying to contribute a little bit. I think it would be in a way compliment this, you know, fantastic contest we have from kind of on what how we actually deal with racism colonialism and how that is still kind of the role of racism and colonialism in the world. And also with a very, a very description of this racist practices that we have within our credit and banking system in the way I'm going to do that is trying to then focus on how economics as a discipline sees all this, or maybe perhaps, you know, it doesn't see all this, and that's going to be where I want you to focus on. And I will start that discussion, highlighting that is impossible to try to understand all the points have been discussed up to now for the question of racism if you don't really have this concept of systemic racism, you know, very clear, which is this practice of racism that is embedded in our everyday life, whatever we like to not whatever we know or not and that's not only in our own individual behavior. But also also in the institutions that is around us how we design that institutions with, you know, it goes back to what kind it was trying to explain to us. And this is starting point is very important for economics and it's, you know, as a discipline and it's teaching in research. And then of course how we teach the issues of banking and finance. And I want to try to make two points why is very important, why this systemic racism is important and what happens when we don't really consider then in our analysis, and of course there are more aspects to kind of focus on two. So the first one is, you know, I guess the question for us is okay, how economics is dealing with all this, how economics is dealing with racism, how economics is dealing with the systemic racism. And the way I see economics, you know, here I'm really focusing on the mainstream economics. Economics has the other phrase just extended in an extensive way, looking to ratio economic inequalities. Okay. So basically looking to this black and white economic inequality and of course into black poverty. But my perspective and I'm going to go through very quickly here and you can go back to that during the question time. I think that approach from, you know, the mainstream approach is inadequate to tackle or to understand the ratio economic inequality, because obviously of its assumptions, you know, because it doesn't have a realistic approach to racing racism, and specifically to race as the social construct. And what I'm basically focusing here in two on two models, the trade models, which is the Becker taste discrimination model, and the human capital theory models, which is where we see the statistical discrimination, which is the relationship between race and productivity. So, I mean, again, we can really go through details during the question time but very broadly, what's the problem with these two models, right, regardless their developments and so on. First of all, we don't move away from the mainstream assumption that link between wages, which is the price of the labor and marginal productivity of labor. So basically, you know, in that word, labor is paid what is worth. That's it, full stop. No, race is not directed, but problem here in the same aspect of imperfect competition of perfect competition because as we know that assumption as well. So these rage wages differential between black and white workers supposed to disappear in the long term in the long run in that framework but it doesn't. We never have a sufficient approach for in explanation why it doesn't. Yes, we will have imperfect competition models, but still we have some of the assumptions of a non classical dimension words that stop us to to kind of understand and tackle what racism is. And what is interesting here is that there is nothing wrong with the economic system either in Becker's role world on the human capital theory word because in the first case, as we know these states discriminations exogenous. You know, that's the explanation of black poverty. In the other case, you know, there's the question of productivity statistical discrimination that's explanation of black poverty and is all external factors from our marketplace right so the economic system. There's nothing wrong with economic system we're not really discussing why racism exists in the first place. And that's complicated because the consequence of that is what we see if extrapolate your analysis you see that always this models directly or indirectly, they're treating black people as if there are some point inferior somehow deficient is something deficient about black people, which goes back to kind of kind of legacy regarding colonialism this kind of view of the world has been fed has been informed based on this hierarchical idea of race so that's the first point of how economics is dealing with race the second point, which I'm going to go very quickly because again, kind of gave a brilliant point, which is, you know, when you look back on these developments of modernity enlightenment is when we see economics as a discipline kind of emerging. And here, we kind of understand this period of a period of rationality technological development so capitalism is now this kind of best thing since sliced bread as they say. So what's happening here is the question of colonialism slave trade is true for racism they often ignored and neglected, but most importantly, most importantly, the language of economics and marriage that's neutral objective, you know, is that's how we learn economics right so there is this kind of we can see this power in balances this structure inequalities and that claim of objective that we like so much in economics. In doesn't consider the political the historical context doesn't consider, especially this legacy of colonialism, which is, you know, a problem because what's happening here will not realize capitalism so that we don't study the history of capitalism and it's linked with colonialism. And then, you know, the scholarship on this legacy of colonialism and impact on the banking industry, financial industry development, industrialization the institution distribution of wealth is is not linked to any kind of this discussion legacy and that's, that's is a problem. So economists they have to come to accept and understand how our view of the world has been formed by these assumptions that justify the colonial rule in Asia, Africa, Latin American Middle East and you have to investigate the knowledge production we have there, and its relation of slavery and colonialism so if you don't do that you can't have a sex factory, sex factory answer for both, you know, how the bank system works but also a better society and a very quick point here if I have problem fine. Okay, for time. That's how I need so what's happening here if you really, for example, have a quick look on how we teach, you know, banking finance for our 30 year and one aspect of this teaching is the credit and development, which is basically about looking to economic growth and economic development, you know, emphasizing the role of institutions and financial development. So, you know, as we probably say, wow, plenty of room to talk about systemic racism. Let's let's do it right. But here we are teaching our students model of misallocation, micro foundation of boring constraint, micro evidence of boring constraint, you know, free financial frictions. There's no space for racism, systemic racism, and it's not really about going back to that course and say, okay, you have to include that in demand from, you know, whoever is putting the syllabus together to talk about racism, because it's a theoretical apparatus that doesn't give space to make that discussion. So if you demand kind of, if you demand from the discipline to discuss racism with these theoretical apparatus, we're just going to have what we've been saying which is let's add this variable for race, like something extra right and it shouldn't be because the issue is deeper. Right, so we need to understand how in this international development we have what pilot called white gaze problem, which is a, you know, is as amazing because what she's saying is, all this international development, this show of credit has this social, this kind of racist construct. What that means is we are looking and design these institutions with this idea of whiteness as the signifier for progress, modernity, expertise, so everything that's not there is not really you know everything that's not related to this whiteness is not related to progress we have to break away from that and you can I can we can discuss more how we can do that but that's it. Thank you from. Thank you. Thank you to all of us because feel like we've like covered some like pretty chunky topics and managed to get our way through the history. We appreciate your perspective on mainstream economics and they're they're rolling up holding white supremacy. It's really crucial. And also, yeah, the kind of in depth details that you gave us so don't have so long left and I'm keen to get in a few questions. I mean a lot of them are, you know, kind of wanting to understand more and also what we can do. So I'm just going to pose one question from me and then a couple from the audience and we'll see if we can do two rounds of three questions if that's okay and feel free is the speakers to pick up on anything. Other speakers said because I feel like, you know, it's just a lot covered so happy to kind of repeat things to put the point across. So my question is around kind of drawing parallels and obviously we've heard a really, you know, important, you know, the finance system we have today was built off the back of genocide and and everything is connected through that history. But, you know, if we think about the kind of intricacies I guess of the financialization we see today and we see, you know, the slave trade was really kind of a crucial step in financialization of in terms of making human lives turned into profit making financial instruments. Can we kind of see those parallels with the financial instruments we see today that are designed to kind of extract rent from powerless individuals. And similarly, can we draw parallels between the bailouts we saw where the slave traders were essentially bailed out where the kind of people working people had to pay in order to which only finished in 2015, in order to end slavery and some of the bailouts we've seen in the last 10 years obviously most recently with with COVID where corporates have received up to a billion pounds without any strings so that's my kind of question and then bringing in a couple of audience members. I can ask, you know, how can we respond as kind of citizens to the kind of critique that in a simple way that, you know, this happened ages ago so we can't hold banks responsible for it now and obviously touched on that but some further points of help. And there's a quick question from James Barker to Kyinde, which was, should the descendants of those who became wealthy through owning and trading slaves have an obligation to repay some of that money to the British government in terms of the fact that their ancestors benefited or thoughts on reparations I guess more generally would be great. So which speaker would like to kick off with a response to to any of that. Those questions. Yeah. Should we go to Joviya and then Kyinde. Yeah, so let me just talk a little bit about the financialization right because I think scholars of financialization sort of love to talk about when when it started and is it is it you know actually like a distinct sort of epoch or is it sort of just a continuation of, you know, things that we've already seen before right. And, and I think so when you're drawing parallels I think an interesting sort of parallel right now is the whole discussion on sort of climate change and the environment right because there's because the financial sector is is sort of there's this growing sense that they're complicit in this sort of degradation. And if there is supposed to, you know, if there is expected to be any kind of sort of restructuring or drastic change then then the financial sector will sort of have to change its own practices, very, very drastically right and I think what's important to sort of remember is that especially what we see, you know, over here in our sort of domestic context in the UK, or in sort of just a broader Anglo American context has very much to do with sort of changes that we've seen over the late 70s and 80s right where the, where financial power sort of taken away from the state right so rather than, you know, the state making loans or sort of, you know, selecting like how how the industry or the market should be shaped, it was increasingly placed in private hands right and then obviously that goes back to this bigger discussion about capitalism itself and the profit motive right because a lot of things can't be achieved if sort of the end game is is just profitability right and on the bailouts I think, you know, we're talking about sort of bailouts again right with the pandemic and we're talking about sort of who's going to get bailed out and and what is sort of the role of the government in in the holding industry right and I and I think over here like you know the thing to think about really is is what extent do bailouts enhance inequality right so so you know on one level it's fine you know people are being alone and people are sort of being, you know, given the means to to continue their livelihood right but then on the other hand, and you increasingly find that that the sort of longer term effects are not even right so you know if you should bail out a company that is, you know, quite heavily involved in in devastating the environment and that's not the same as you know bailing out someone someone else for instance. So yeah, that's all for me. Thanks so much. Can I pass to you? Yeah, sure I mean I think certainly there's as many a parallel between if you look at the way that you know human life is devalued in the pursuit of profit and we see that all the time like there's a reason why your clothes are manufactured by people in like in the black and brown world right because like we can literally accept that the conditions in which they live can mean you can pay them pennies right I mean that that's I mean these logics the logics haven't gone anywhere right we live in white supremacy is what shapes global inequality is look at any map of the world. And GDP per capita is the white conjures at the top is Africa at the bottom and an Iraqi in between that's literally the definition of white supremacy that came through the enlightenment so we're still living that in a very real way. And bailouts in the same way so the government will bail out industries which are essential to the economy, which tells you just how essential slavery was to the economy, and also their racialized so for example the before COVID the biggest bailout in recent memory was the banks with actually the bank collapse was caused by racialized lending subprime mortgages as they called them subprime mortgages that was the mostly black and brown people in America who had these terrible mortgages with the for the for to live in terrible conditions and that's what collapsed system who got the money wasn't the people who the victims of it was the banks which is still going and they're still thriving. So you can see that logic plays out there. Also, I think that's goes to the question of how can you respond to the critique this happened ages ago. This slavery ended but the logic that black life doesn't matter of white supremacy of exploitation based on race did not go anywhere is still very clearly with us and really financialized as well so if you look at the third world debt if you look at the trade works if you look at the way that we just literally steal the resource wealth out of Africa to make things you couldn't have you couldn't have any of this conversation with all this technology that we use. Unless we literally just stolen the resources out of the African continent. So the logic is still very much there hasn't gone anywhere, and also the legacies of this are very much there as well. So if the wealth from slavery and colonialism is still with us then the poverty is still with us. The reason Africa is poor is because of that history and continued presence of racial exploitation. And so I get to the, I mean the thing about the reparations question that we have to first understand that everybody here including me actually ironically we're in a funny situation that right like I also benefit from racial you know one of the top 3% paid in the entire world so crazy about it, like if you just look at the imbalance between those who live in the Western knows you don't. You know we all benefit from the legacies of slavery, colonialism, etc. And yeah of course they should be, they should be a debt should be paid. And the only real quick problem with the reparations question is, you know, the amount of money we're talking about would literally destroy the political and economic system. And so really what we should be saying is, we just need a new fairer political and economic system. Fantastic, thank you. And currently you would like to come in on any of those questions. Yes. Great. Yeah. Should I go. Yeah, that'd be great. Just a few comments on financialization. I mean, I think the point is, as kind of said, you know, if we are considering the idea of racial capitalism, not just capitalism. So our entire analysis actually considered how, you know, the entire functioning of the financial system is indeed basing slavery, violence, imperialism, etc. So it's like if you are very clear about the legacy of the likes of colonialism and then how that impacts inequality, the inequality we see, racial inequality, because then when you look at whatever is financialization, it's just closing to like thinking in terms of financial innovations, for example. So if you look into all this financial innovation that we have in the financial system and the positive way we are welcoming this, if you don't have a perspective and you consider this inequalities that we are heriting from this colonial past, we are going to, for example, we're going to look at what the treasury did when he ended slavery in the UK and see that as a super creative solution. It actually has been tweeted two years ago by the treasury, right? Oh, look how creative we are. But if you have this conception of the world where you're considering the legacy of colonialism, you'd think twice how you deal with all this financial innovation. And from that perspective, I think financialization sometimes in a more, in a heterodox world, of course there is all the link with the chains we have in the 30, you know, 40 years, but more broadly, you know, if you're trying to understand as a development of the financial system, we can't really move away from this idea of racial capitalism. So you can draw parallels, you know, the case of microfinance that Jure probably can say much better than me, but also the question of access to finance that we have with the international financial organizations, right, trying to promote this development of the financial system developing countries. Without considering, as Arad has been said, this uneven development we have between the core and the periphery, which is also linked to colonialism. So you just come up as international organizations with this idea of access to finance to promote economic growth. And now 30 years later, we are picking up the pieces of that consequences. And a lot of that is because we didn't consider the legacy of colonialism, what actually are the drivers between the core and the periphery. So I think we need to bring that to our analysis. Regarding how to respond to all this claim, how colonialism is still very much in our everyday life, one thing I like to say to my students, to myself, is to kind of have the sense of how privileged we are and be constantly critic to, you know, the self critic vigilance to how we understand history, how we narrate history, how we, you know, are describing the world. I think that's the, you know, what we can do is how we actually understand our own world view, you know, what is behind that I think this is the main way, and I have one comment on reparations, definitely not my field of expertise, but I think sometimes reparation is seen a very negative way in the sense that it's just this kind of a specific financial remuneration for something that's long, you know, really in the past. And I think especially the case of the US, I haven't really looked into the case of the UK is very clear, you really can trace down the consequence of how black people that were born and owners of London US, for example, how they were taxed, how they lost their land and trace down people who actually cause inflict that and so on. And I think this is an important issue that should be said. But what's happening in the US right now is that not even the investigation of this history is allowed, right, has been accepted, let alone the idea of reparation, which actually was much more welcoming in the 40s and 50s, for example. So we really have also to start reviewing our prejudice against the idea of reparation just associated with the financial aspect of it. Thank you. Thanks so much. I feel like, yeah, there's just so much to talk about all of these. I'm going to, we've only got a few minutes left, so I'm going to give you a couple of hopefully quick questions. And yeah, do feel free to bring in any other points. So one question, I guess, maybe more for Carolina, it'd be great to hear from all of you that came in from Attif Khan is just around mainstream economics and how they can. I mean, obviously we've seen some incremental change since the crash of kind of mainstream economics and the kind of a kind of bigger movement of people challenging like neoclassical economic models and the idea of, you know, neutrality and some of the things you bought up. You know, how can we take that further when we consider race and white supremacy? Is there any, you know, further insights you can give us of how we can kind of encourage mainstream economists to take these things seriously without kind of telling them they have to become a totally pluralist economist, I guess, maybe that's not possible. And another question which might have an obvious answer would be great to have all of your points is, is racialization intrinsic to capitalism. We've had slavery in apartheid is the 21st century, in the 21st century, is there such a thing as non-racist capitalism or does it invariably rely upon the exploit of perceived racial ethnic differences. And that's come from Mike Hope. And just one more question from Elsbeck in Edinburgh. I mean, she kind of talks about the interconnectedness of this kind of parts of this monster system that we've kind of all grown up in and is kind of intrinsic to the way we work. So it's almost like psychologically entwined as kind of white supremacy in our heads. So how do we kind of confront this? Can the panelists kind of give us their view on places to apply pressure for change? And yeah, thoughts on that would be great. Does anyone feel like, should we start? Maybe we'll go in a different order. Start with you, Caroline, to take the first question, especially on the mainstream economics, if that's okay. And I'm going to ask you to keep your answers pretty, pretty short because they're running out of time. Yeah, of course. Well, I agree. The mainstream economics has indeed made, you know, kind of done some changes and challenges in neutrality. For me, very quickly, but there's, you know, with DECON, with this organization, I'm part of, we've been coming up with alternatives. But I think the main point here is how we read address the curriculum in economics and how we make them to center this idea of racial capitalism and the idea of systemic discrimination. Because if you, you know, of course, the journey to then how are we looking to, you know, econometrics, how are we looking to, I don't know, micro and bring that in is an entire different issue. But right now we're not even bringing that discussion to the departments of economics. And I think also this kind of discussion should be compulsory for the education of an economist. It's not just in an operational module. And that's also about the history of slavery and colonialism. So I think this is definitely something we need to push. Otherwise, you know, the future generation will still be struggling to deal with that. And you're not going to be able to get to the point where we look into specific modules such as econometrics and trying to work it out. What is actually the legacy of colonialism here in that paper? We don't even get that discussion. So I think this is what we need to do. We need to push to bring racial capitalism to the center of our discussion in economics because I think it's center you can't really trying to look at society without considering racial capitalism, which take us to the last question. So yeah, so that's what I would, I mean, as I said, I can talk more in terms of what how we can do that. We have a list of of actions we want you to push. So is that the only question from a head to address? Yeah, that's fine. We can we can come back if there's any other quick points you've got at the end. And today, are you okay to go next? Yeah, I mean, I think the key thing is to understand that the reason the mainstream economics or the mainstream sociology, etc. that doesn't have these analysis is because that's the point, right. These are actual I think we should start to understand that our school system and I do university in there is essentially propaganda for the racist social order. I think we have to really get this like if you don't understand if you don't have an analysis that centers race in any of these is just bad. But unfortunately that is what it is that that is the mainstream diet which we're fit. So it's time and I think this is a big thing that people need to get used to is that we have to get rid of these models, but there's just no place for a model that doesn't have race. And if you want to have a proper account of what happens next, and I had had this debate with myself in the book, because I was writing about the enlightenment and thinking about fingers like can and typically my approach has been, well, you know, you can still teach Canada. No, cancel for just get rid of him. You don't need to do like this. The things we've been told are absolutely central need to be away and we need to start again, because there is not because to answer the second question. There is no capitalism without racism, like it might be possible to imagine a system where capitalism develops without racism. But that is not the world we live in the capitalism we have is intrinsically banned up in racism, as are most of our models of understanding it. So it's time to create new models of understanding it. Thanks so much. Thank you. Giveria, would you like to comment on any of those? Repeat any if that's helpful. Yeah, sure. I mean, I completely agree with Carolina and kindly so I'm just going to sort of talk about what other point that you raised which was about pressure points right. And I think like within the financial system there's, you know, there's plenty of discussion on on sort of what parts can be reformed right. And I'll just give you three examples right so one is essentially like the banking system itself right and and and now we know enough about sort of this private disintermediated sort of model, to to know that it's, you know, it's not help on who's who's super rich essentially right it's designed to multiply wealth and wealth you know if you're going to benefit from multiplying wealth if you've already got lots of it and if you've got less you're going to benefit less and that gap is going to constantly grow right. And that's a huge deal. You know if you have no wealth to accumulate. You know, in this environment where you're competing, or your your interests are sort of being undermined by those huge, huge amounts of wealth right so the financial system itself is structured like that to to, you know, advantage certain types of people right then related to that is just you know the simple, you know, matter of taxation right so, you know we can debate about whether the capitalist system has this capacity to sort of, you know accommodate change and all of that and and and it's, you know, about 60 years ago or so right when you have what Pallani calls the double movement and how sort of capitalism adjusted itself to to sort of, you know, avoid collapsing or being destroyed right. And the tax system is still a viable mechanism for addressing many of the inequalities that we see today right to certain types of redistribution can be done like fairly simply with with some very very basic reform right so I'm talking about things related to health care education, and so on right. And the third thing that I just want to mention the third sort of pressure point is, is regulation right so somebody has actually mentioned that in the Q&A right so I'm going to elaborate a little bit on that just just things like like the Basel regulation right they do actively outside Basel. And that's, you know, sort of set of regulations that applies to to, you know, banks of a certain size, and also the financial action task force restrictions which which regulate how many moves around the globe right. These sorts of restrictions are multiplying inequalities right because they are impeding banks from functioning and allowing businesses to grow their capital. Right so there is this if you're a large corporation so if you're you know Apple or Facebook, you have huge advantages you can avoid tax you can avail offshore centers. You can, you know, accumulate wealth in a certain way whereas if you're a smaller company you might not even be able to get basic credit to do certain things. And these are things that can be you know, changed fairly simply with with the changes in regulation in the regulatory bodies. Yeah, that's all thanks. Yeah, yeah, just as long as it's like a few, you know, a couple of sentences will be fantastic. Just follow because she's very, she already said everything I wanted to say as well that if you have this, if you are coming from this structural inequality point of which we should demand from policymakers and economies to then develop policies that will reduce inequalities that we see in this, you know, financial system. It's interesting because many people say, I don't like affirmative action, but I think we should think that for 200 years or plus white people are benefit being benefited from affirmative action in a way because the system is racist. And I think the other aspect is lawmakers who need to push for lawmakers to consider legislation that would make the process of lending more transparent and financial activities. And there is a study looking to UK of how black households do not have access to credit market, you know, excluded from the credit market, and although it's not clear the explanation as to why we can again, dig into this, this legacy of colonialism. So the issue of the model that's used, you know, is there are some issues regarding the scoring, the name of the model now I think the credit scoring model, and how perhaps the model itself may have been built it kind of, you know, whatever is built it may have a bias against black people so you need also to push to question the methods that we are using within the financial system and that's guiding our lending practices. Thank you so much. Yeah, no it's really important point and I think there's just so much more to talk about on this topic so I hope that we've given you all a taste of the kind of massive topics around racism, money and banking, the whole economy, history of slavery and colonialism, and you've, you know, got into it over your lunch break and I think the key is that this is a start of a much bigger conversation so I just want to say a huge thank you to our three panellists for their really excellent insights on this topic and obviously thank our audience which will just name a few more places people are from so I didn't get to before. But we have people from the Philippines, South Africa, India, Ghana and Poland as well as in the UK, Leeds, Gloucester, Reading, Hartford and Brighton and many more so I really appreciate the fact that people are coming from, you know, all over to talk about this topic. You know, I think, you know, there's clearly a lot of unlearning we all need to do and particularly, you know, talking to our white audience that positive money has is predominantly. And so I think you know although sometimes when we talk about system change it can feel a bit disempowering because it feels like there's so much to do but actually you know we can start start off with ourselves and our communities and that's a really important part of this conversation. So yeah I just want to say thank you again and just highlight that we are going to have another webinar in a couple of weeks which will delve into some of these areas but also looking more recently at the mix of the COVID crisis inequality and debt. Thanks again and we will continue these conversations no doubt and have a good afternoon everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.