Steve Keen's Debtwatch

There are sev­er­al providers of sta­tis­tics on Aus­tralian house prices, but only one that does­n’t have a vest­ed inter­est in the direc­tion house prices actu­al­ly move in: the Aus­tralian Bureau of Sta­tis­tics. So despite the crit­i­cisms of this series—that it’s based on detached dwellings only, based on medi­an sales data, too infre­quent, not adjust­ed for “hedo­nic” dif­fer­ences between hous­es, etc., it’s the only one I trust.

Click here for data in Excel: Debt­watch; CfE­SI
Click here for more data in Excel: Debt­watch; CfE­SI
Click here for this post in PDF: Debt­watch; CfE­SI

The fol­low­ing is a mini-doc­u­men­tary that was screened on one of the final days at the recent Insti­tute of New Eco­nom­ics Think­ing (INET) con­fer­ence held in Berlin.

Finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, or the lack there­of. Lead­ing thinkers speak out on what they feel is at the core of the prob­lem.

The lat­est CPI data from the ABS has revealed nofla­tion for first quar­ter of 2012. The pre­vi­ous Decem­ber 2011 quar­ter also record­ed nofla­tion, con­trary to RBA expec­ta­tions of infla­tion­ary pres­sure from the min­er­als boom.

It is like­ly that Tuesday’s meet­ing will be the point at which the RBA will have to aban­don their expec­ta­tions of ris­ing inter­est rates to tame an Infla­tion bogie that has turned out to be Nofla­tion in prac­tice. In the April meet min­utes, the RBA board fin­ished with:

Steve took part in a dis­cus­sion on the state of the Eurpean Union econ­o­my on Tonight with Vin­cent Browne on the 18 April while in Ire­land. The con­ver­sa­tion explores the flaw of the Maas­tricht Treaty and poten­tial eco­nom­ic solu­tions for the Euro­pean Union. A short 10 minute fea­ture of Steve is avail­able from the below YouTube clip or you may click here from to view the full length show.

I’m just unwind­ing back at my hotel after this 23 day, 4 coun­try, 7 city trip; an exhaust­ing but worth­while expe­ri­ence (made all the more chal­leng­ing by either Heathrow or Qan­tas los­ing my bag for 8 days on my arrival!).

The Just Bank­ing con­fer­ence organ­ised by the Friends of the Earth Scot­land was a fit­ting finale. I won’t write too much about it here–I’m too tired–but I’m sure Beth and friends will do a good write-up. For now, here is a screen record­ing of my pre­sen­ta­tion and the Pow­er­point slides; lat­er we’ll add the video as well.

A new book called Demand Side Eco­nom­ics, by Alan Har­vey, has been released. It deal­ing with some of the vision­ary thinkers behind chang­ing con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic the­o­ry for the bet­ter.

Alan intro­duces the book say­ing:

Below is the video of my talk at INET’s Berlin 2012 con­fer­ence. The oth­er videos for the con­fer­ence are avail­able from INET’s web­site: Day 1; Day 2; Day 3.

Bear­ing in mind that I did­n’t see all pre­sen­ta­tions,  my favourite talks (in deliv­ery order) were those by: George Soros; Gerd Gigeren­z­er; Axel Lei­jon­hufvud; Michael Hud­son; Yanis Varo­ufakis; Dirk Beze­mer; and Moritz Schu­lar­ick.

 INET will pub­lish this paper on their web­site in due course. Click here for the Pow­er­point file;
Click here for the data: Debt­watch mem­bers; (CfE­SI mem­bers link to come in Syd­ney morn­ing)

Lau­ren Lyster and Demetri Kofi­nas at Rus­sia Today’s Cap­i­tal Account did their usu­al bril­liant job in this inter­view with me about the Krug­man brawl, and I’ve been some­what remiss in not post­ing it here ear­li­er. I’ve giv­en enough links on this top­ic in ear­li­er posts not to both­er now, so look to those if you want to fol­low the debate in more detail.

Sor­ry, that was a belat­ed April Fool’s joke. He has­n’t, of course—though there has been an apol­o­gy of sorts from Nick Rowe, which is duly not­ed and accept­ed.

The best Krug­man could man­age is the fol­low­ing update to his orig­i­nal dia­tribe “Oh My, Steve Keen Edi­tion”:

Update update: Ah, so Keen did­n’t mean DSGE — a term that refers only to New Key­ne­sian mod­els — when he said DSGE; he meant New Clas­si­cal, which he some­how regards as the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples for mod­els that aren’t New Clas­si­cal at all. OK. Any­way, enough of that. I’m all for lis­ten­ing to heretics when they offer insights I can use, but I’m not find­ing that at all in this con­ver­sa­tion, just word games and con­tin­u­al insis­tence that the mem­bers of the sect have insights denied to us less­er mor­tals. Time to move on.

Q: What do John May­nard Keynes and Steve Keen have in com­mon?

A: They’ve both been mis­read by Paul Krug­man.

In just a cou­ple of days I’ve gone from the priv­i­lege of being acknowl­edged by Krug­man to being mis­read by him, in a way that would have any stu­dent failed in a mul­ti­ple choice exam. In a pas­sage where I specif­i­cal­ly referred to DSGE models–which includes both “New Clas­si­cals” and “New Key­ne­sians” he inter­pret­ed me as refer­ring to New Key­ne­sian mod­els only.

And I said “under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples to the DSGE mod­els”, which should have been enough of a clue that I was refer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to New Clas­si­cal mod­els, not New Key­ne­sian ones.