Steve Keen's Debtwatch

Last week I showed that Australia’s net gov­ern­ment debt to GDP ratio is noth­ing to pan­ic about when com­pared to the rest of the world. We’re cur­rent­ly at under 12 per cent, where­as most OECD nations have ratios of 50 per cent and above.

But maybe that’s one rea­son Australia’s econ­o­my is rel­a­tive­ly strong.

I also showed that most coun­tries aren’t like busi­ness­es in that most coun­tries have a net neg­a­tive equi­ty posi­tion — their lia­bil­i­ties exceed their assets — which is a sit­u­a­tion that would have most com­pa­nies on their way to being declared bank­rupt.

This is a talk about what the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences could be of Aus­trali­a’s ambi­tion to achieve a per­ma­nent gov­ern­ment sur­plus of 1% of GDP. I present a very sim­ple Min­sky mod­el in which banks lend mon­ey to the pri­vate sec­tor, and the gov­ern­ment both spends and tax­es the pri­vate sec­tor. I then explore 4 sce­nar­ios: a bal­anced bud­get; a per­ma­nent sur­plus of 1% of GDP with no change in bank behav­ior; a per­ma­nent sur­plus of 1% of GDP with a sig­nif­i­cant increase in bank lend­ing; and a per­ma­nent deficit of 1% of GDP. The results are not what pro­po­nents of gov­ern­ment sur­plus­es expect.

Ask any politi­cian if gov­ern­ments should run sur­plus­es and the answer is like­ly to be a resound­ing yes, with the ratio­nale being that gov­ern­ments should “live with­in their means”.

Pre­cise­ly this rea­son was giv­en by the Aus­tralian Nation­al Com­mis­sion of Audit, which has been charged by the Abbott gov­ern­ment with the task of sug­gest­ing ways to rein in gov­ern­ment spend­ing. Its first report gave as the very first of its “Prin­ci­ples of good gov­ern­ment” the mantra that gov­ern­ments should:

Live with­in your means. All gov­ern­ment spend­ing should be assessed on the basis of its long-term cost and effec­tive­ness and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the nation’s long-term finances (Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry, Nation­al Com­mis­sion of Audit).

I’m speak­ing at two events this week­end:

North­side Forum: “THE AGE OF ENTITLEMENT IS OVER” So claims our Trea­sur­er, but for whom?:

Sat­ur­day May 3rd, 12–2pm, Func­tion Room at the Union Hotel, North Syd­ney, 271 Pacif­ic Hwy, North Syd­ney 2060

The launch of Geoff Davies’ book Sack the Econ­o­mists:

Sun­day, 4th May 2014, 3:30 for 4 pm, Glee­books, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe NSW

Fol­low the links above to book a place.

In his lat­est blog, Paul Krug­man slings off at non-main­stream econ­o­mists — and the stu­dents at Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty cam­paign­ing for change to the eco­nom­ics cur­ricu­lum — for want­i­ng fun­da­men­tal change in eco­nom­ics. para­phras­ing his argu­ment, it is:

No need for change, boys and girls: main­stream eco­nom­ics has every­thing under con­trol. We missed the cri­sis just because we failed to observe the shenani­gans in the shad­ow bank­ing sys­tem. Once we realised our obser­va­tion­al errors, we had all the nec­es­sary tools and knew what to do (oh, and what the rebels said would hap­pen did­n’t any­way, so there!). The sta­tus quo is fine: move along folks, noth­ing to see here…

Pro­fes­sor John Kom­los has just released a new text­book on eco­nom­ics which breaks away from the mold of pro­duc­ing clones of Samuel­son’s genre-defin­ing opus. Its title is “What Every Eco­nom­ics Stu­dent Needs to Know and Does­n’t Get in the Usu­al Prin­ci­ples Text”. At a price of $26.55 via Ama­zon, it is priced to be an afford­able sup­ple­ment to a stan­dard text­book. Giv­en the fail­ings of the dis­ci­pline that were so vivid­ly high­light­ed by the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis, this book is well worth con­sid­er­ing as an alter­na­tive to the Neo­clas­si­cal mono­cul­ture that dom­i­nates eco­nom­ic tuition today.

The fol­low­ing blurb is lift­ed from John’s web­site:

I will launch Sack the Econ­o­mists, by Geoff Davies, on Sun­day 4 May (3:30pm for a 4pm start) at Glee­books, 49 Glebe Point Road Glebe NSW 2037 Syd­ney.  The event is free, but an RSVP is required here or via phone at 02 9660 2333.  Fol­low­ing is an edit­ed extract per­tain­ing to Thomas Piketty’s recent best-sell­er.  I hope to see Syd­ney-side read­ers of this blog at the launch.]

This is a guest post from Geoff Davies

There is no end of com­men­tary about China’s real estate bub­ble, with an even split between those who believe it may pop at any moment, and oth­ers who argue it nev­er will.

The alter­na­tive ploy — that it doesn’t exist — doesn’t get same air­ing that it did in the US before the sub­prime crash. Instead, the “it’s a bub­ble, but it won’t burst” case is that the bub­ble is too impor­tant to China’s con­tin­ued growth to be allowed to burst, and — unlike the US — Chi­na has the where­with­al to keep it going, at least for a while. (See There will be no Min­sky moment for Chi­na, March 25; Chi­na Can’t Afford to Let Its Hous­ing Bub­ble Pop, Jan­u­ary 30;Tem­ple­ton Brav­ing China’s Hous­ing Bub­ble, Feb­ru­ary 28; Chi­nese Prop­er­ty Sec­tor Will Not Implode Like Amer­i­ca’s Sub­prime Mar­ket, March 11.)

Back in the Olde Days, before the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis, when I was one of a hand­ful rais­ing the alarm, some of the most stri­dent oppo­si­tion to my opin­ion about what this might mean for hous­ing in Aus­tralia came from Christo­pher Joye (who was then a Direc­tor at Ris­mark). We went head to head on many occa­sions, with me argu­ing that our prices were a debt-fuelled bub­ble, and Joye argu­ing that ris­ing house prices sim­ply reflect­ed ris­ing house­hold incomes.

There are very few peo­ple who qual­i­fy as unfor­get­table in your life, and Ted Wilshire was one of those for me. A larg­er than life char­ac­ter in every sense of the word, Ted was best known as the Research Offi­cer for the Aus­tralian Met­al Work­ers Union (AMWU) who penned the then-influ­en­tial pam­phlets Aus­tralia Ripped Off and Aus­tralia Uproot­ed in the days pri­or to The Accord under the Hawke and Keat­ing Gov­ern­ments.