Steve Keen's Debtwatch

As you may know, I am now Head of the School of Eco­nom­ics, His­to­ry and Pol­i­tics at Kingston Uni­ver­si­ty Lon­don. I took on the posi­tion for two rea­sons: because Kingston was already a cen­tre for plu­ral­ist eco­nom­ics; and because as Head of School I could main­tain and strength­en its plu­ral­ist approach. I’d like you to con­sid­er join­ing me here, and if you plan on doing a Mas­ters in Eco­nom­ics in the 2015–16 aca­d­e­m­ic year, then now is the time to apply.

Kingston offers a range of Eco­nom­ics MA degrees from het­ero­dox, plu­ral­is­tic and applied per­spec­tives, full time and part time. Our degree units are:

The lat­est in my reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tions with Simon Rose of Share Radio. This time, to quote their blurb:

Steve keen on why the Greek finance min­is­ter is fan­tas­tic, QE will not work, con­ven­tion­al econ­o­mists have no idea how the real world works.

I first met Yanis Varo­ufakis when he was a senior lec­tur­er (the 3^rdstep in the 5‑tiered Aus­tralian sys­tem, equiv­a­lent to a Pro­fes­sor in the USA) at Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty in the late 1980s, and I was a tutor (the 1^st step) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales. We’ve been friends ever since, and now he has become glob­al­ly promi­nent as the Finance Min­is­ter of the most trou­bled and high pro­file econ­o­my on the plan­et, Greece.

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About 40 years ago, one of Mag­gie Thatcher’s chief advi­sors remarked that he wouldn’t be sat­is­fied when the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty was in gov­ern­ment: he would only be hap­py when there were two con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties vying for office.

He got his wish of course.

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The polls were right: Greece did elect Syriza, the left-wing coali­tion par­ty (its name is actu­al­ly a Greek acronym for “Coali­tion of the Rad­i­cal Left”), bring­ing to pow­er the first staunch­ly anti-aus­ter­i­ty par­ty in the EU, and the first ele­ment in their pol­i­cy doc­u­ment is to “Write-off the greater part of pub­lic debt”.

That is like­ly to lead to some frac­tious nego­ti­a­tions with the EU, and pos­si­bly even a messy exit from the Euro. Before that hap­pens, there will be some messy com­men­tary in the media as well, and I ful­ly expect most com­men­ta­tors to take a line like that in my title.

I was inter­viewed by Gor­don Long for the Finan­cial Repres­sion web­site last week. The video is below; a brief sum­ma­ry of our dis­cus­sion is post­ed on the Finan­cial Repres­sion web­site and repro­duced below.

PROF. STEVE KEEN TALKS

FINANCIAL REPRESSION

THE ART OF GETTING AN EDUCATION IN ECONOMICS

Pro­fes­sor Steve Keen has found that top flight uni­ver­si­ties are dom­i­nat­ed by very nar­row, doc­tri­naire teach­ing. This styl­ized view has result­ed in crit­ics of this view only get­ting jobs in low rank­ing uni­ver­si­ty. With pride Steve Keen puts his lat­est uni­ver­si­ty in that camp. “If you want a good edu­ca­tion in Eco­nom­ics, you don’t go to a good uni­ver­si­ty. The wider range of thought and diverse ana­lyt­ics is found at the low­er rank­ing uni­ver­si­ty. Kingston Uni­ver­si­ty is one of those clas­sic uni­ver­si­ty!”

I was inter­viewed by Lelde Smits for the Finance News Net­work on my recent trip back to Syd­ney. Below is the begin­ning of the tran­script; you can read the rest by click­ing on this link. Or click below to watch the inter­view with Lelde.

Tran­script of Finance News Net­work inter­view with Kingston Uni­ver­si­ty Head of Eco­nom­ics, Pol­i­tics and His­to­ry, Dr Steve Keen

Lelde Smits: Hel­lo, I’m Lelde Smits for the Finance News Net­work and join­ing me from London’s Kingston Uni­ver­si­ty is Head of Eco­nom­ics, Pol­i­tics and His­to­ry, Dr Steve Keen. Steve, wel­come back to Syd­ney and to FNN.

In the oth­er­wise for­get­table movie Cock­tail, when Tom Cruise’s char­ac­ter Bri­an Flana­gan abrupt­ly splits with his date Bon­nie, she pleads with him not to let their rela­tion­ship end bad­ly. He replies “every­thing ends bad­ly: oth­er­wise it wouldn’t end.”

The tur­moil in for­eign exchange mar­kets caused by Switzerland’s abrupt end­ing of its Euro peg may be such a bad moment for the Euro—and it comes fig­u­ra­tive­ly moments before anoth­er like­ly bad moment, the elec­tions in Greece on Jan­u­ary 25^th that will in all like­li­hood bring the anti-aus­ter­i­ty par­ty Syriza to pow­er. Will the Euro, like Flanagan’s rela­tion­ship in Cock­tail, end badly—and abruptly—soon?

The British elec­tion cam­paign has begun, and Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron is run­ning with the slo­gan that his Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty will deliv­er “A Britain liv­ing with­in its means” by run­ning a sur­plus on day-to-day gov­ern­ment spend­ing by 2017/18. It is, as the UK Tele­graph not­ed, hard­ly an inspir­ing slo­gan. But it is one that res­onates with vot­ers, because it sounds like the way they would like to man­age their own house­holds. And a house­hold budget—whether you bal­ance yours or not—is some­thing we can all under­stand. If a house­hold spends less than it earns, it can save mon­ey, or pay down its debt, or both. So it has to be good if a coun­try does the same thing, right?