On this week’s Movies vs. Capitalism, hosts Rivka Rivera and Frank Cappello are joined by Francisco Pérez, an activist, educator, and the director of the Center for Popular Economics, who blows the lid off the 1939 movie-musical classic The Wizard of Oz.
Apple Podcasts ~ Spotify ~ Google Podcasts ~ iHeartRadio
Amazon Music ~ Stitcher ~ Overcast ~ Pocket Casts ~ In Browser
A rough transcript of the episode is available here.
Francisco details how L. Frank Baum’s original 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, offered an allegory for U.S. monetary policy and the populist economics movement of the 19th century. Specifically, the book explored the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which sought to upend the gold standard in order to ease the strain on indebted American farmers.
Francisco explains how the debate between sound finance (prioritizing monetary value) and functional finance (prioritizing full employment) continues to rage today over interest rates and inflation.
Links:
For next week’s movie, MVC will be watching the 2007 animated film Bee Movie.
To get access to MVC Premium, click here.
If you like this episode, feel free to pitch into the tip jar — it helps us do this kind of reporting:
We hope you enjoy our new weekly podcast — it’s the next step in our plan to build a powerful independent voice to take on corporate media.
