Two recent interviews

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I had a cou­ple of impromp­tu inter­views with over­seas inter­net media groups this week–Dominic Fris­by inter­viewed me on my expec­ta­tions for 2011 on his “Fris­by’s Bulls and Bears” pro­gram, and Michael Surkan inter­viewed me for the inter­net radio/podcast progam The Opti­mistic Bear. I’ve excerpt­ed the intro­duc­tions from the two web­sites below; to hear the inter­views them­selves, click on the main links below.

The Frisby interview

In part VIII of our of shows look­ing at 2011, Dominic Fris­by talks to Aus­tralian econ­o­mist Steve Keen of Debtdeflation.com.

Steve is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics & Finance at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Syd­ney, and author of the pop­u­lar book Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics (Zed Books UK, 2001).

Steve pre­dict­ed the finan­cial cri­sis as long ago as Decem­ber 2005, and warned that back in 1995 that a peri­od of appar­ent sta­bil­i­ty could mere­ly be “the calm before the storm”. His lead­ing role as one of the tiny minor­i­ty of econ­o­mists to both fore­see the cri­sis and warn of it was recog­nised by his peers when he received the Revere Award from the Real World Eco­nom­ics Review for being the econ­o­mist who most cogent­ly warned of the cri­sis, and whose work is most like­ly to pre­vent future crises.

He has over 50 aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions on top­ics as diverse as finan­cial insta­bil­i­ty, the mon­ey cre­ation process, math­e­mat­i­cal flaws in the con­ven­tion­al mod­el of sup­ply and demand, flaws in Marx­i­an eco­nom­ics, the appli­ca­tion of physics to eco­nom­ics, Islam­ic finance, and the role of chaos and com­plex­i­ty the­o­ry in eco­nom­ics. His work has been trans­lat­ed into Chi­nese, Ger­man and Russ­ian.

Click here to read Steve’s essay of Decem­ber 2009 on the glob­al debt cri­sis, Debt­watch No 41, Decem­ber 2009: 4 Years of Call­ing the GFC.

Click here for more on the book, Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics.

This Week on Bear radio: A moment of Minsky

In this episode Steve Keen shares his knowl­edge of eco­nom­ics to not only debunk the rev­er­ence paid to econ­o­mists by pol­i­cy mak­ers but to explain that the titans of the eco­nom­ic the­o­ry are mis­un­der­stood. Keynes wasn’t the advo­cate for stim­u­lus spend­ing as many assume and Karl Marx actu­al­ly had a lot of great insights that are con­ve­nient­ly swept under the car­pet. Steve goes on to pro­vide a tuto­r­i­al on the life and ideas of his hero Hyman Min­sky, explain­ing how this was one of the few who under­stood the sheer unpre­dictabil­i­ty that under­lies all eco­nom­ics. We also dis­cuss the how there is noth­ing spe­cial about the Aus­tralian, Cana­di­an, or Chi­nese economies oth­er than the fact that they have been able to breathe new life into their economies by blow­ing big­ger bub­bles. The end result is inevitable: glob­al defla­tion.

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About Steve Keen

I am Professor of Economics and Head of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University London, and a long time critic of conventional economic thought. As well as attacking mainstream thought in Debunking Economics, I am also developing an alternative dynamic approach to economic modelling. The key issue I am tackling here is the prospect for a debt-deflation on the back of the enormous private debts accumulated globally, and our very low rate of inflation.