Steve Keen's Debtwatch

By Philip Soos

Source: The Con­ver­sa­tion

 

Since the begin­ning of the glob­al finan­cial crises in 2007, there have occurred numer­ous eco­nom­ic and finan­cial crises around the globe, plung­ing often pros­per­ous nations into hard­ship and even near bank­rupt­cy. These crises, typ­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed by over­lend­ing by the finan­cial sec­tor and crash­ing hous­ing bub­bles, are often blamed upon two par­ties – gov­ern­ments and banks – with con­sid­er­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

There is, how­ev­er, a third vil­lain that bears pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty for these dis­as­ters. While politi­cians, gov­ern­ment bureau­crats, financiers, bankers and the real estate lob­by have come under with­er­ing assault in the eyes of enraged publics, the eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sion has large­ly escaped the fury. Giv­en the impor­tance of this pro­fes­sion in struc­tur­ing eco­nom­ic and finan­cial pol­i­cy, the lack of atten­tion and account­abil­i­ty pos­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion as to why this is.

Kim Hill inter­viewed me about Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics on her Radio New Zealand Nation­al pro­gram “Sat­ur­day Morn­ing” today. It was prob­a­bly the most in-depth inter­view I’ve yet done on the top­ics cov­ered by the book. This was my first expe­ri­ence of Kim as an inter­view­er, and I can rec­om­mend her pro­gram unre­served­ly after it.

Steve Keen’s Debt­watch Pod­cast

 

You can also down­load the pod­cast from here:

Kim Hill inter­view about Debunk­ing Eco­nom­ics

Here is great short video inter­view with the Wall Street Jour­nal explain­ing why 10 year US Fed bond yields are so low…

Krug­man would def­i­nite­ly sub­ti­tle a post like this “Wonk­ish”!

Click here for this post in PDF: Debt­watch; CfE­SI

This is a paper I’ve recent­ly sub­mit­ted by invi­ta­tion to an Aus­tralian eco­nom­ics jour­nal. I have been very qui­et on the blog while fin­ish­ing this in the last 2 weeks. I’m like­ly to remain qui­et for the next fort­night, since I leave for the Fields Insti­tute in Toron­to on June 1^st, where I’ll be work­ing for a month with the math­e­mati­cians there to ana­lyze and refine my var­i­ous mod­els of finan­cial insta­bil­i­ty. Gras­sel­li and Cos­ta Lima have already done a bril­liant job ana­lyz­ing my 1995 mod­el in this paper.

For those who are unfa­mil­iar with this quote, it is tak­en from The Foun­tain­head, by Ayn Rand, and I rec­om­mend it as a high­ly amus­ing fic­tion­al read. I do find it rather iron­ic that this quote is eas­i­ly applic­a­ble to Pro­fes­sor Steve Keen’s con­struc­tive­ly cre­ative approach to eco­nom­ic the­o­ry. Sad­ly, neo­clas­si­cal eco­nom­ics— today’s con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic current–is the sec­ond han­der of this defunct “free mar­ket” eco­nom­ic pos­tu­late that Ayn Rand helped cul­ti­vate through her far right-wing phi­los­o­phy of Objec­tivism. If neo­clas­si­cal eco­nom­ics is a reli­gion, then Objec­tivism is more of a cult! Even more amus­ing than her fic­tion­al  nov­els them­selves, was that Ayn Rand refused to drink her own Kool-Aid when she used the very wel­fare sys­tem that she spent her life cam­paign­ing against.

Mish Shed­lock has just let us know that his wife Joanne, who has been suf­fer­ing from the degen­er­a­tive Lou Gehrig’s Dis­ease, has just passed away.

Mish has kept this prob­lem to him­self until the final months, when he launched an appeal to raise funds for research into this dis­ease. He is con­tin­u­ing that cam­paign now, so please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to assist (or buy­ing a lot­tery tick­et).

David Burchell pro­vides his inter­pre­ta­tion of the Keen vs. Krug­man debate on RadioN­a­tion­al Coun­ter­point with Michael Duff and Paul Com­rie-Thom­son.

By Michael Edesess

 Source: Advi­sor Per­spec­tives

A foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple of mod­ern eco­nom­ics is that the cre­ation of cred­it leads to eco­nom­ic growth. That pre­cept under­lies need for quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing, and it is cen­tral to the ques­tion of what role mon­e­tary pol­i­cy can and should play in stim­u­lat­ing a faster recov­ery from the Great Reces­sion. It is also the sub­ject of a debate between one of the world’s most promi­nent eco­nom­ic schol­ars, Paul Krug­man, and a feisty Aus­tralian econ­o­mist, Steve Keen.

Paul Krug­man is wide­ly appre­ci­at­ed for his New York Times columns crit­i­ciz­ing Repub­li­can demands for fis­cal aus­ter­i­ty. He right­ly argues that cut­ting back pub­lic spend­ing will wors­en the eco­nom­ic depres­sion into which we are sink­ing. And despite his par­ti­san Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty pol­i­tick­ing, he warned from the out­set in 2009 that Pres­i­dent Obama’s mod­est counter-cycli­cal spend­ing pro­gram was not suf­fi­cient­ly bold to spur recov­ery.

These are the themes of his new book, End This Depres­sion Now. In old-fash­ioned Key­ne­sian style he believes that the solu­tion to insuf­fi­cient mar­ket demand is for the gov­ern­ment to run larg­er bud­get deficits. It should start by giv­ing rev­enue-shar­ing grants of $300 bil­lion annu­al­ly to states and local­i­ties whose bud­gets are being squeezed by the decline in prop­er­ty tax­es and the gen­er­al eco­nom­ic slow­down.

LECTURER IN POLITICAL ECONOMY (2 vacan­cies)

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES

REFERENCE NO. 628/0412

 

. Join a lead­ing arts fac­ul­ty

. Work in a col­lab­o­ra­tive and sup­port­ive inter­dis­ci­pli­nary envi­ron­ment

. Full-time, con­tin­u­ing: $104.6K — $124.2K p.a. (includ­ing salary, leave load­ing and up to 17% super)

 

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney is Aus­trali­a’s first uni­ver­si­ty and has an out­stand­ing glob­al rep­u­ta­tion for aca­d­e­m­ic and research excel­lence. It employs over 7500 per­ma­nent staff sup­port­ing over 49,000 stu­dents.