Cornell College Events

Todd Knoop, professor of economics, will give a lecture titled "A House of Cards with Chinese Characteristics: The Chinese Financial System." Like its economy in general, China's financial system is disproportionally important to the global financial system—China accounts for nearly 30 percent of total financial assets and holds 60 percent of the world's foreign reserves. The problem is that the Chinese financial system is as convoluted and opaque as any in the world. The complexity of its financial system does not reduce China's importance, just the difficulty of understanding how China has achieved such growth with such an inefficient financial system that has not—as of yet—experienced a major financial crisis. This talk discusses the distorted formal Chinese financial system, its huge underground lending markets, and the building financial crises within the system that threaten the Chinese—and the world—economy.

German Club will be showing "Goodbye, Lenin!," a comedy about the lengths to which a young man will go to protect his mother from realizing that the Berlin Wall has come down. The film contains English subtitles.