Occupy Chicago

Fri. 1/6
12:30 – Rally and Political Theater (Michigan and Wacker)
2:30 – URPE  March (Gather at 17 E Monroe) to Rally (Michigan and Wacker)
3:30-5:30 – People’s Economic Conference, Roosevelt University (430 S Michigan 3rd floor)
 
Sat. 1/7
12:00-3:00 – People’s Economic Conference Roosevelt University (430 S Michigan 3rd floor) 
 4:30 – Mock Awards Ceremony (Michigan and Wacker)
 
Chicago 1/5 -- The 2012 Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) national conference will be held Jan. 6-8 in Chicago, with an agenda strongly influenced by the American Economic Association (AEA). For decades the AEA has fostered a narrow, free-market orthodoxy in the economics profession. 
 
Unlike other professional organization, the AEA has no code of ethics and its members no incentive to disclose the source of research funding or other conflicts of interest. Some members presenting at this year’s conference, including John Campbell, chairman of Harvard Economics Department, were featured defending the status quo even as the global economy went into a tailspin in the Oscar winning documentary “Inside Job” directed by Charles Ferguson.
 
"Members of the AEA who put their own self-interest and that of the 1% above a functioning economy for all are making the AEA morally, intellectually, and academically bankrupt,” says David Orlikoff, film critic and Occupy Chicago organizer. “Profiteering AEA members of both parties move between academia and government, spinning failed free-market theory, and are essentially subsidized by the 1% and the politicians they fund. This corrupt system leads to failed ideas such as trickle-down theory, austerity and low capital gains tax rates. The data are in, and the results are disastrous for our country.”