I was dis­gust­ed to learn this morn­ing that Syd­ney had joined Mel­bourne in being one of the very few cities around the world to evict the Occu­py pro­test­ers. I’m glad at least that I got a chance to speak at yes­ter­day’s ral­ly, before the police action at 5am this morn­ing.

I had hoped that Syd­ney would dis­play more sense than Mel­bourne had, but unfor­tu­nate­ly I was wrong. Aus­tralians are often quick to crit­i­cize Amer­i­can soci­ety, but at times like these one has to respect the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence:

As not­ed in the pre­vi­ous post, I’ve been invit­ed to speak at the Occu­py Syd­ney ral­ly tomor­row (from 12pm). I attend­ed last week’s ral­ly as an observ­er, when I would say about 2,000 peo­ple were in atten­dance. Below are some of the pho­tos I took of the event.

I am one of sev­er­al speak­ers tomor­row at Occu­py Syd­ney (there are a num­ber of web­sites on this top­ic; Occu­py Syd­ney; Occu­py Aus­tralia). Accord­ing to the organ­is­ers:

The event will begin at 12.00pm and will begin with a wel­come to coun­try from an indige­nous rep­re­sen­ta­tive fol­lowed by some intro­duc­tions etc from the three MC’s and then the speak­ers (in no par­tic­u­lar order). There will be five speak­ers includ­ing your­self speak­ing for ten min­utes each… There will then be two speak­ers with five min­utes each.

In this lec­ture I con­tin­ue the devel­op­ment of the QED mod­el of a pure cred­it econ­o­my began in the last lec­ture, includ­ing mod­el­ling pro­duc­tion and devel­op­ing a pric­ing equa­tion to pro­duce a com­bined mon­e­tary-phys­i­cal mod­el. (see NOTE below if you can’t see this video in your brows­er)

Pow­er­point Slides (QED Files Free down­load; Debt­Watch Mem­bers: Part 1 Part 2; CfE­SI mem­bers: Part 1 Part 2)

That is the title of a fea­ture in the Cana­di­an news­pa­per The Globe and Mail that a cor­re­spon­dent has just brought to my atten­tion. It’s not an earth-shat­ter­ing arti­cle, as my cor­re­spon­dent observed, but it is remark­able to see arti­cles like this turn­ing up in the main­stream media. The author Tra Basen observes at one point:

While the pro­test­ers occu­py­ing Wall Street are not car­ry­ing signs denounc­ing ratio­nal-expec­ta­tions and effi­cient-mar­ket mod­el­ling, per­haps they should be.

Eco­nom­ics has met the ene­my, and it is eco­nom­ics

One of my close research col­leagues Trond Andresen has writ­ten the fol­low­ing sys­tems engi­neer­ing analy­sis of how a par­al­lel non-debt-based mon­e­tary sys­tem might func­tion in an econ­o­my suf­fer­ing a debt-induced cri­sis in its main mon­e­tary sys­tems. I thought his analy­sis could be of inter­est to read­ers of this blog.

(This is a revised and expand­ed ver­sion of a paper pre­sent­ed and in the pro­ceed­ings of the 9th Soci­ety of Het­ero­dox Econ­o­mists Con­fer­ence, Decem­ber 6 and 7 2010, UNSW, Syd­ney.

An ear­li­er and short­er ver­sion appeared in Coun­ter­punch June 25 ? 27, 2010.)

Luci Ellis of the RBA recent­ly pre­sent­ed a paper on finan­cial reg­u­la­tion:

The Platypus Moment: Rents, Risks and the Right Responses

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet; that said, I like the cri­tique writ­ten by “Deep T” on the Mac­robusi­ness blog:

The Platypus blues

I was inter­viewed by the Rene­gade Econ­o­mist when I was in Eng­land recent­ly.

I can’t bet­ter the Rene­gade Econ­o­mist’s own expla­na­tion of their role and mem­ber­ship:

A Rene­gade Econ­o­mist is an indi­vid­ual who — through their actions — pos­i­tive­ly dis­rupts how we live, inter­act and do busi­ness.

Impos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy by demo­graph­ics, gen­der or back­ground the Rene­gade Econ­o­mist can­not be pigeon­holed by social sta­tus or mate­r­i­al trap­pings. These are peo­ple in every indus­try who have an over­rid­ing desire: to elim­i­nate the glar­ing dis­con­nect between who they are and what they do.

World Econ­o­my

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Chi­na, RBA, 30^th Sept

‘The Reserve Bank of Aus­tralia is estab­lish­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Chi­na. An office, locat­ed with­in the Aus­tralian Embassy in Bei­jing, will begin oper­a­tions in mid Octo­ber and will assist in the Bank’s ongo­ing mon­i­tor­ing of eco­nom­ic and finan­cial con­di­tions in Chi­na. It will also help build rela­tion­ships with var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies and pri­vate enti­ties.’

Be Afraid, The Econ­o­mist, 1^st Oct

‘Unless politi­cians act more bold­ly, the world econ­o­my will keep head­ing towards a black hole.’

Here we go again, The Econ­o­mist, 8^th Oct

Lecture 8: Introduction to dynamic modeling. (Slides: CfESI Subscribers  Part 1; Part 2; Debtwatch Subscribers Part 1 Part 2)

Explain­ing the “Mon­e­tary Cir­cuit The­o­ry” of cap­i­tal­ism. I show that the dilem­mas that hob­bled Cir­cuit The­o­ry for so long were sim­ple mis­takes in dynam­ic mod­el­ling, which reflect poor­ly not so much on Cir­cuit the­o­rists them­selves, but econ­o­mists in gen­er­al, since even non-ortho­dox econ­o­mists are locked into the sta­t­ic ways of think­ing they were taught by neo­clas­si­cal lec­tur­ers. This lec­ture gives a very brief intro­duc­tion to the basic ele­ments of dynam­ic modeling–differential equa­tions and sys­tems engineering–and begins explain­ing QED, the pro­to­type mon­e­tary dynam­ic mod­el­ing tool devel­oped by blog mem­ber Sir­ius.