This is the sec­ond install­ment in a 4 part post; click this link for the first part. But first, a word about my Kick­starter cam­paign to raise funds to devel­op Min­sky, a tool for design­ing strict­ly mon­e­tary macro­eco­nom­ic mod­els:

There are only 5 days left to help Kick­start Min­sky! We’ve raised $61,500 now, which puts us with­in strik­ing dis­tance of our first stretch goals:

$100,000

About 1400 hours of total pro­gram­ming time will enable Rus­sell to com­plete the “Mun” release, which will focus on improv­ing the graph­ics and pre­sen­ta­tion aspects of the pro­gram.

This is a post in at least 4 parts; for part 1, click this link to the Busi­ness Spec­ta­tor arti­cle.

There are only 10 days left to help Kick­start Min­sky! Help us reach our stretch goals:

$100,000

About 1400 hours of total pro­gram­ming time will enable Rus­sell to com­plete the “Mun” release, which will focus on improv­ing the graph­ics and pre­sen­ta­tion aspects of the pro­gram.

Nathan will also be able to devel­op a ver­sion of Min­sky for iPad and Android Tablets.

I was invit­ed to give a talk at NICTA, Aus­trali­a’s main cen­tre for fos­ter­ing research and devel­op­ment in the infor­ma­tion, com­put­er and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­tries, on Min­sky. I am hop­ing that they will adopt Min­sky as a research project–both in terms of fund­ing and assist­ing its devel­op­ment. Click here for the Pow­er­point slides.

My talk to about 60 NICTA researchers con­cerns the Min­sky project, from its gen­e­sis in my mod­el­ing of Min­sky’s Finan­cial Insta­bil­i­ty Hypoth­e­sis to my Kick­starter cam­paign to raise devel­op­ment funds.

A group of Swiss aca­d­e­mics have recent­ly launched a peti­tion to call for the pro­tec­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic inde­pen­dence. Per­son­al­ly I think it’s gone well past the point where pro­tec­tion is the appo­site term, giv­en the extent to which the func­tion of Uni­ver­si­ties has been erod­ed over the last 4 decades. But we have to start some­where. Please read their peti­tion below and sign at the rel­e­vant web page for your­self:

(Eng­lish) http://zuercher-appell.ch/index_en.php

(Deutsch) http://zuercher-appell.ch/index.php

(Français) http://zuercher-appell.ch/index_fr.php

(Ital­iano) http://zuercher-appell.ch/index_it.php

Inter­na­tion­al Appeal for the pro­tec­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic inde­pen­dence

The Kick­starter cam­paign to fund fur­ther devel­op­ment of Min­sky has hit its min­i­mum tar­get of $50,000, which is great.

Kick­starter Fund­ing Pro­file as at March 1st

Vis­i­tors from Debt­watch have been the most pro­lif­ic pledgers as well–though direct donors and “Twit­ter­ers” have been the most gen­er­ous in the aggre­gate, and Open Source fans from with­in the Kick­starter com­mu­ni­ty have been the most gen­er­ous on a per capi­ta basis:

Kick­starter Pledgers Pro­file March 1st–the top 5

There’s an excel­lent post by John Car­ney, CNBC’s Senior Edi­tor, on the mechan­ics of lend­ing, deposit cre­ation, and how these inter­act with reg­u­la­to­ry and cap­i­tal require­ments. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100497710

I’ll have a crack at mod­el­ing this in Min­sky short­ly; I have already done a sim­i­lar mod­el to illus­trate why reserves lag deposits in almost all coun­tries, so it should­n’t be too dif­fi­cult to knock this illus­tra­tion up in it.

I was going to write a piece about how Paul Krug­man doesn’t under­stand IS-LM today, but as often hap­pens when I read Krug­man, I find myself agree­ing with him – even if our approach­es to eco­nom­ic analy­sis are very dif­fer­ent.

INET is hold­ing a grad­u­ate stu­dent work­shop pri­or to its upcom­ing ple­nary con­fer­ence in Hong Kong on April 4–7.

The 2‑day work­shop con­sists of a mini course in 20th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry of eco­nom­ic thought and anoth­er mini course on sta­tis­ti­cal learn­ing. Plus, there will be stu­dent pre­sen­ta­tions. INET cov­ers expens­es for trav­el and hotel — this should be quite attrac­tive for stu­dents. Details here:

http://ineteconomics.org/ysi-hong-kong/­work­shop

Stu­dents have to apply online (fol­low link above). The dead­line for appli­ca­tion is Feb 24, so please hur­ry!

I’m speak­ing at a lunchtime sem­i­nar for the Eco­nom­ic Soci­ety of Aus­tralia NSW Branch on Thurs­day Feb­ru­ary 28th, in the Ground Floor East Sem­i­nar Room of the Reserve Bank of Aus­tralia in 65 Mar­tin Place Syd­ney. The func­tion will start with light refresh­ments at 12.15pm, with a 12.30pm start; it will fin­ish between 1.15pm and 1.30pm.

My top­ic is “Explain­ing the Cri­sis Using Pri­vate Debt and Aggre­gate Demand” (see the abstract below). It’s free for mem­bers; if you’re not one, I expect that you would have to join the soci­ety to be able to attend. If you’d like to attend, send an email to ecosocnsw@ecosoc.org.au.

Econ­o­mists are wont to crit­i­cise habits as a sign of irra­tional­i­ty, but they’re often a sen­si­ble rule of thumb that stops us doing oth­er things we’ll lat­er regret.

A case in point: over the years, I’ve devel­oped the habit of not read­ing Ross Git­tins. Last week I broke that habit, and the expe­ri­ence remind­ed me of how sen­si­ble that habit was.

Click here to read the rest of this post

Help reform eco­nom­ics. Kick­start Min­sky now!: http://t.co/rzFwjEnJ