Tony Abbott recently pledged himself to restore the “Golden Age of Prosperity” that Australia enjoyed under John Howard’s prime ministership:
“That’s why the longer this government lasts, the better the Howard government looks and that’s why the Howard government now looks like it created a golden age of prosperity, which is lost,” Abbott said in a speech to the South Australian Liberal Party.
I gave the talk below last Sunday at UWS’s Open Day, as an intoduction to economics for prospective university students. Preparing it made me reflect on the great good fortune I had to be appointed to UWS.
This might evoke a “Huh?” response from the usual suspects on such issues–why be pleased about being appointed to a second-rate University (and in an out-of-the-way place like Sydney to boot)? It’s because the Economics & Finance program at UWS has been almost unique amongst economics departments around the world in deliberately pursuing a “pluralist” approach to economics.
Bernie Madoff, is often the first person that comes to mind when you mention the words Ponzi scheme these days, in the midst of the ongoing financial crisis. The Madoff Ponzi scheme fabricated almost $65 billion of money that didn’t exist. The exponential relationship between finding new investors money to funding the old investors overzealous and unsustainable gains were bound to come crashing down as new investors were nowhere to be seen,having lost confidence in the markets in the aftermath of the 2008 crash. One would think that investors would have learnt their lesson on when returns are too high and can not be justified by any legitimate marketplace, but old habits die hard in the current financial crisis!
Below is a great interview with Steve and Simon Maude — a prelude to Steve’s New Zealand tour, hosted by talksNZ. Steve reiterates how today’s economic environment is the beginning of a debt induced depression, how this could give rise to political instability, and hits some of his well regarded notes on excessive bank lending.
We are all speaking at the American Monetary Institute conference in September–from Thursday 20th till Sunday 23rd. The full list of speakers is here. It’s a chance to hear people who are all interested in modeling the financial system and monetary reform in general, but who approach it in very different ways:
My dynamic non-equilibrium Circuit approach;
Michael Kumhof’s DSGE model with banking; and
Kaoru Yamaguchi’s systems engineering model (designed in Vensim)
As well as hearing Michael Hudson and Elizabeth Kucinich (wife of Congressman Dennis Kucinich).
By Philip Soos
The level of sub-prime mortgages in Australia may be far in advance of what was previously assumed and provided for by banks. The story was broken on the ABC, and coveredelsewhere. The revelations centred around two personalities: Kate Thompson and Denise Brailey.
Steve will be touring New Zealand from Thursday 6th September through till Monday 10th September, at the invitation of talksNZ, to give 3 exclusive seminars. These will include examination of economics as a real world concern, and analysis of the global financial situation and the New Zealand economy. Steve will be presenting 2 seminars in Auckland and 1 in Wellington, with the dates/times scheduled as follows:
Topic: The New Zealand and Australian Asset Markets
Date: Friday 7 September
Time: 8.45am — 3.00pm
Venue: Barrycourt Hotel
20 Gladstone Rd, Parnell, Auckland
Topic: The Global Economy
Several years ago (June 2006) I wrote an article advancing a new theory of why the dollar is the world’s dominant currency and why it is likely to remain so. The article was published in the midst of the last boom and sank like a stone. But now debate about the cause of the dollar’s hegemony has been revived in an interesting paper by Fields and Vernengo titled “Hegemonic currencies during the crisis: The dollar versus the euro in a Cartelist perspective” (also here). Their paper provides an opportunity to revive discussion, so I am posting the article again. Here it is (subject to a couple of word edits):
Last Friday 3rd August, Dr. Matheus Grasselli from the Fields Institute in Toronto Canada presents an in depth talk on the mathematical foundations of the Keen-Minsky Model on financial instability. Steve spent 6 weeks with Matheus at the Fields Institute over June and July, with an intensive research agenda to progress the mathematical logic behind Minsky. The event was held at UWS. Unfortunately the audience questions are difficult to hear with microphone setup that was used, and there is a small break in the footage at 12 minutes and 18 seconds in.
Click here to view Matheus’s research paper.
On this day 5 years ago, the global economic crisis began. The trigger was the decision by BNP to suspend redemptions from funds that were linked to the US housing market. Those of us who had been expecting a debt-deflationary crisis
and warning about it
for some time (see also here and here) could never have picked the trigger itself—that would have been prophecy, not prediction—but very rapidly it was clear that this was it.
(Click here for this post in PDF)
Figure 1
