In this interview for KGNU's 'It's The Economy' Claudia Cragg speaks with Vann Alexandra Daly who is renowned as the “crowdsorceress” for her expertise in crowdfunding. Over the course of a year, Alex has raised millions of dollars for clients including Oscar and Emmy-nominated filmmakers and Neil Young (for the 'Pono'). She has served on panels at distinguished film festivals, universities, and is now on a national tour with the Knight Foundation offering her expertise on the subject. In addition to her crowdfunding successes, Alex is a producer for the feature length documentary "Cocaine Prison", which has received support from the Macarthur Foundation, Cannes Film Festival’s Fonds Sud Cinema, the Tribeca Latin America Fund, Bertha BritDoc Journalism Award, and more. Her other films have been selected by the world’s most prestigious festivals including Sundance and Tribeca.

Before transitioning into film Alex was a journalist for numerous publications, including New York magazine and SPIN, as well as the sole researcher for WSJ. magazine. Alex graduated from Vanderbilt University, where she double majored in Spanish and Philosophy, minored in film, and earned her honors thesis on 'Existentialism in Contemporary Drug Cinema'.

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Aidan White, Director of the Ethical Journalism Network. The network is a coalition of media professionals and support groups committed to building a global campaign in support of ethics, good governance and self-regulation in journalism and media. He is committed to new and innovative ways to support independent journalism and promotion of journalists' rights. He is an expert with deep understanding of issues related to media policy and journalism standards and has helped launch major international groups in support of press freedom and journalists' safety. Over a period of 30 years he has initiated programmes of support for journalists including professional training, association and union building and humanitarian support and raising awareness of the dangers facing media and journalists across the world. You can read his blog here and his Twitter handle is @aidanpwhite.

White is an inspiring communicator and speaker, writer, negotiator and presenter with experience in building coalitions and encouraging social dialogue between employers and unions.

He was the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists from 1987 until April 2011. He previously worked for several newspapers in the United Kingdom. He was with The Guardian in London prior to joining the IFJ. He is a long-time campaigner for journalists' rights and is a former activist with the National Union of Journalists in Great Britain and Ireland.

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"Fool me once, shame on you Fool me twice, shame on you."

Orig: "He that deceives me once; shame fall him; if he deceives me twice, shame fall me". James Kelly, Scottish Proverbs (1720).

In May 2009, Claudia Cragg interviewed the FT's Gillian Tett for then KGNU News co-Director, Joel Edelstein, on the 'It's The Economy' show. This was shortly after publication of Tett's then brand new book, "Fool's Gold, the Inside Story of J P Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe."

The so-called 'never again' safeguards may or may not be in place to prevent a new worldwide even more serious catastrophe. By the time their efficacy is tested, it may be too late. And given the surfeit of new financial instruments and derivative games created since 2008, there is no sensible reason to presume it cannot or won't happen again and the fallout, while unimaginable, could be even worse than the prolonged 'Great Recession' that so many ordinary working lives have been subjected to.

Recently Gillian Tett has been calling attention to a relatively new problem, the 'Dark Pools' and their potential for causing global financial instability.

Relying on caveat emptor to keep the trading system from becoming too murky is naive

Few are taking heed.

Having ignored this proven financial Cassandra once before, are the Powers That Be so obdurate and greedy that they will wilfully ignore her once again?

When you listen to her analysis here of 2008, you will concur that as of July 1st 2014, very little indeed has changed. 

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To begin the 12 June 2014 of the "It's The Economy" show broadcast on KGNU Denver/Boulder, everyone makes career mistakes. For many, though, acknowledging them can feel tantamount to occupation suicide.

Here, Jessica Bacal, director of the Smith College Wurtele Center for Work and Life, speaks with Claudia Cragg about her book, Mistakes I Made At Work. For this, she has interviewed 25 women across a variety of career fields—from writers to doctors to engineers—who share their worst on-the-job moments.

This advice, useful to all, shares how mis-steps  can be used as learning experiences to build a successful career.

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For the second half of the 12 June 2014 of the "It's The Economy" broadcast on KGNU Denver/Boulder 'Money in Education' was the topic under discussion in the studio with Claudia Cragg. First of all, we speak with Ron Berler, author of Raising The Curve. This is followed by two highly informed, academic guests with more than a passing interest, Richard Murnane and Greg Duncan exploring the 'Inequality in, and potential for, 'Restoring Opportunity' in the US education system. In focus is the Common Core Curriculum. Watch related videos at RestoringOpportunity.com.

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#MayaAngelou RIP 

In May of 2013, KGNU News Director, Joel Edelstein, generously invited colleague Claudia Cragg to speak by phone with Dr. Maya Angelou for a one on one interview. It turned out to be one of the very last she ever gave to talk about her then latest book. Explored here is the influence the great woman has had on another Maya, Maya Carter. She is a 19 year old from Denver,(now just finishing her College freshman year) and, listening to the original KGNU interview, young Maya here tries to explain the effect that Dr.Angelou's life, work, poetry and thinking has had on her and in her initiation of the Motivate & Empower Movement she has founded in her honour. 

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KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Peter Van Buren, a 24-year veteran of the State Department. He spent a year in Iraq, an experience that led to his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. As a result, the US Department of State began proceedings against him. Through the efforts of the Government Accountability Project and the ACLU, Van Buren instead retired from the State Department with his full benefits of service.

The main point of discussion here though is Van Buren’s personal work experience (in the hiatus when suspended from the State Dept) working for a store he calls 'Bullseye' in the minimum wage Big Box economy. This led to his new book Ghosts of Tom Joad, A Story of the #99Percent based on his up close take on the drastic effects of social and economic changes in America between WWII and the decline of the blue collar middle class in the 1980’s right up to today.

Notes for the book (from Van Buren's Blog); Some Background from a Real Economist

Economist Thomas Piketty’s new bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century makes clear there has been a significant increase in income inequality in America. Our inequality rate is higher than it ever has been in our own history, is growing, and is higher than in countries in Western Europe and Canada.

In the United States, the top one percent own 35 percent of all capital, and the top ten percent of wealth holders own roughly 70 percent. The bottom 50 percent have roughly five percent. Note also that until slavery was ended in the United States, human beings were also considered capital.

The inequality is driven by two complementary forces.

By owning more and more of every thing (capital), rich people have a mechanism to keep getting richer, because the rate of return on investment is a higher percentage than the rate of economic growth. This is expressed in Piketty’s now-famous equation R > G. The author claims the top of layer of wealth distribution is rising at 6-7 percent a year, more than three times faster than the size of the economy.

At the same time, wages for middle and lower income people are sinking, driven by factors largely in control of the wealthy, such as technology employed to eliminate human jobs, unions being crushed and decline in the inflation-adjusted minimum wage more and more Americans now depend on for their survival.

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In June 2011, KGNU's Claudia Cragg spoke with the New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson about her then just published book, 'Reckless Endangerment'. More than 5 years on since the world financial catastrophe of 2008, nothing much has changed and many consider 'endangerment' not only persists but may now be even more prevalent. 

In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy. Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco.

Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster.

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Ryan Carson about the 70 people who work at Treehouse, an online education company that teaches people about technology. They work only four days a week at the same full salary as other tech workers. Yet the company’s revenue has grown 120 percent, it generates more than $10 million a year in sales, and it responds to more than 70,000 customers, according to a post in Quartz by CEO Ryan Carson.

Carson has been working four-day weeks since 2006, when he founded his first company with his wife, he told ThinkProgress. He quit his job to start it, only to find that they both put in seven days a week. “I remember distinctly my wife and I were on the couch one evening,” he recalled, “and she said something like, ‘What are we doing? I thought that starting a company means you have more time and more control, but it seems like we have less time and less control and we’re more stressed out.’” They decided to cut back by not working Fridays, and after they hired their first employee, “we decided to officially enact [a four-day week] and we never looked back.”

Carson has since started three other companies at which he’s instituted this rule, Treehouse being the latest. While it’s hard to quantify, he believes his company benefits from better output and morale. “The quality of the work, I believe, is higher,” he said. “Thirty-two hours of higher quality work is better than 40 hours of lower quality work.” The impact on his employees’ outlook is also “massive,” he said. “I find I just can’t wait to get back to work” after the weekend, and he suspects the same is true for others. On Mondays, “everyone’s invigorated and excited.” He recounted a time when a developer told him that his hope was to work at the company for 20 years. In the Quartz article, he noted that a team member gets recruitment emails from Facebook, but that his response is always, “Do you work a four-day week yet?”

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KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Dee Williams (PAD, Portland Alternative Dwellings) to discover how she found a way to lower her monthly bills to only $8 dollars as outlined in her new memoir and 'how to' The Big Tiny.

After a heart condition diagnosis ten years ago, a new sense of clarity took hold for Dee Williams. As she looked around her overpriced, oversized house, Williams thought: What was all this stuff for? So she downsized, building a new life in 84 square feet. Now a pioneer in sustainable living and an accomplished teacher and lecturer on tiny house-building, Williams has achieved a happy balance and created a model for simple, sustainable, practical living.

Her book, as you will hear here, is a touching personal memoir of a woman rebuilding her life from scratch, as well as an account of the DIY tiny house movement. From suburban properties to city apartments, and from HGTV to local communities across the country, people are rethinking what it means to be a homeowner and how to build sustainable lives for themselves and their families.

But Williams also offers practical and philosophical guidance for aspiring tiny homeowners and for those just looking to de-clutter their lives (Williams can list all of her belongings on a single sheet of paper.) This is part how-to and part why-to and The Big Tiny is both a graceful and inspired meditation as well as an exploration of what it really means to build the good life and more importantly the right life.