Interview on Engineer.net

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I was recent­ly inter­viewed by Eric Tave­nier for the web­site Engineer.net, which is an engi­neer recruit­ment and job search ser­vice in the USA.

Eric was tak­en with my advo­ca­cy of what I called “Engi­neer Cap­i­tal­ists” (in con­trast to the finan­cial spivs who dom­i­nate busi­ness today in the USA) in my inter­view on The Keis­er Report, and want­ed me to elab­o­rate for his audi­ence. The inter­views have been post­ed to YouTube (see below).


For Aus­tralian view­ers, there was an inter­est­ing report in today’s Sun­day Tele­graph on the lev­el of mort­gage debt in Aus­tralia, which now exceeds 100% of our GDP–higher than Amer­i­ca at 95.5%.

Mish on the Fictional Reserve System

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Mike Shed­lock (“Mish” as he is known to all) has writ­ten an excel­lent piece on the defla­tion-infla­tion debate, focus­ing on the Achilles Heel of the latter–the fact that it is based on the belief that we live in a “frac­tion­al reserve bank­ing” mon­e­tary sys­tem. He offered to let me cross-post here, and I’ve repro­duced it in its entire­ty below (there’s only one point I’m not sure on–the com­ment that there are no reserve require­ments for sav­ings accounts. From my read­ing of the foot­notes to Table 12 in this Fed­er­al Reserve paper, that’s true of cor­po­rate accounts but not indi­vid­ual ones).

Max Keiser Interviews

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Max Keis­er inter­viewed me for his 4th Keis­er Report when I was in Paris ear­li­er in Decem­ber. I come in at about the 13 minute mark after Max’s ban­ter with Sta­cy:

It was a great interview–Max had about ten ques­tions pre­pared, but only asked about 3 of them because the con­ver­sa­tion flowed so well.

We also record­ed a pro­gram on what 2010 may bring for mar­kets and economies for BBC Radio 5 Live Break­fast; the pro­gram will go to air on New Year’s Eve at 10PM Lon­don time.

Mish on Tech Ticker

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Mike (“Mish”) Shed­lock­’s site MISH’S Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Trend Analy­sis pro­vides reg­u­lar, inci­sive and down to earth com­men­tary on the US and glob­al economies, and his site is one of my first ports of call when I want do take a more crit­i­cal look at any US data that appears to be more dis­sem­bling than inform­ing.

Mish has made a rare appear­ance on Yahoo’s Tech Tick­er–anoth­er reg­u­lar favourite of mine–to pull apart the most recent appar­ent­ly pos­i­tive devel­op­ments in the US uem­ploy­ment rate.

If you haven’t yet acquaint­ed your­self with Mish, then I sug­gest you watch this video (also embed­ded below) with Aaron Task from Tech Tick­er, and then check out Mish’s blog.

Debtwatch No 41, December 2009: 4 Years of Calling the GFC

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I first realised that the world faced a seri­ous finan­cial cri­sis in the very near future in Decem­ber 2005, as I pre­pared an Expert Wit­ness Report for the NSW Legal Aid Com­mis­sion on the sub­ject of preda­to­ry lend­ing.

My brief was to talk about the impact of such con­tracts on third par­ties, since one ground to over­turn a loan con­tract was that it had dele­te­ri­ous impacts on peo­ple who were not sig­na­to­ries to the con­tract itself. I was approached because the solic­i­tor in the case had heard of my aca­d­e­m­ic work on Hyman Min­sky’s “Finan­cial Insta­bil­i­ty Hypoth­e­sis”.

Helsinki Economics and Politics Seminar

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The Depart­ments of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence and of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki recent­ly held a sem­i­nar enti­tled “Eco­nom­ics: Chal­lenges for Polit­i­cal, Philo­soph­i­cal and His­tor­i­cal Research”. The moti­va­tion was a reor­gan­i­sa­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty that will com­bine these two Depart­ments. The fly­er for the sem­i­nar adver­tised it in the fol­low­ing man­ner:

This sem­i­nar, orga­nized joint­ly by the Depart­ment of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics and Cen­tre of Excel­lence on Glob­al Gov­er­nance Research, will start with reflec­tions on the role of eco­nom­ics and eco­nom­ic stud­ies.

  • Can we com­bine eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics through polit­i­cal econ­o­my?
  • Have polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic stud­ies neglect­ed his­to­ry?

Michael Hudson Talk & Green New Deal Discussion

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Michael Hud­son was a recent and wel­come vis­i­tor to Aus­tralia, and I helped arrange a talk by him at Cus­toms House that many peo­ple on this blog sup­port­ed finan­cial­ly, and quite a few attend­ed. My own attempt to record the speech was unsuccessful–the sound qual­i­ty was just too low–but anoth­er record­ing of  the event (by Sean Reynolds from Pol­i­tics in the Pub) was more suc­cess­ful than mine. Here it is below. My apolo­gies for tak­ing so long to post it, but I’ve been even busier than usu­al recent­ly and I sim­ply did­n’t have the time to do so until now.

My Per Capita Talk on Debt

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I haven’t yet had time to post Michael Hud­son’s talk at Cus­toms House–hopefully I’ll man­age that this weekend–but in the mean­time here is the talk I gave a cou­ple of days ear­li­er at Per Capi­ta’s Pol­i­cy Exchange 2009 Con­fer­ence in Can­ber­ra on Octo­ber 21st 2009. The good folk at SlowTV put this togeth­er, and this is the link to the video on their site.