Commanding Heights Series Part 2 (Essay Sample)

Reaction Paper No. 1
Student’s Name
Institution of Learning
Commanding Heights Series Part 2
This paper focuses on the first half of episode two. The paper will offer a summary of the most important facts, and events of the video. In addition, the paper will identify key people, and events which are important. The paper will also relate the events in the episode to Economic Theory. The first section shows the transition of the world from market economies to planned economies, and back to market economies. The following section shows the trends of movement towards the current and future problems experienced by the globalized world. It is clear that people came up with ideas, accepted and rejected them. This series captures the areas where the events took place, and interviews the most prominent (Yergin, D., & Stanislaw, 2002).
Most notable personalities
The most notable personalities are Joseph Stanislaw, Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, and Leszek Balcerowicz , and workers from different nations. Therefore, the documentary covers all aspects of the 20th century world economic to the administration of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. However, the main issue under discussion is the struggle between free market and government control during the era globalization (Yergin, D., & Stanislaw, 2002).
Events
Part Two of the documentary depicted events which began as the early 1980’s began and as the world war two rekindles. There was an existence of a world order with forces of economic foundations. The episode is based on the contribution of the concepts of micro-economics, especially focusing on the agony of reform. The proponents of this concept, Keynes, saw the mistakes of free market in the post war era through the period where the government took control over the economy (Yergin, D., & Stanislaw, 2002). The western civilization was attracted by the idea of owning or regulating Commanding Heights of the economy. This appeared after the WW2, where the Keynesian view of microeconomics became the main point of discussion of the world economy. Based on the Keynesian idea, the governments must have control of the commanding heights, whether they are socialist, communist, or capitalist regimes. In addition, there was also a notion that regulation resulted into improved economic outcome.
There were also other assertions that socialist states cannot achieve success because of lack of a functioning price system, which could be used to send signals to consumers and producers; hence, resulting to crisis; hence referring to a fully functioning market system, without regulations. Both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher believed that retraining government spending and reducing the regulations could save their national economies.
The western world struggled with deficits and inflation, while the communists g...