Steve Keen's Debtwatch

As I explained in my last post, the cost curve in the Trea­sury’s mod­el of the RSPT is based on a fan­ta­sy. The sit­u­a­tion is even worse when we turn to the oth­er side of the mod­el, the demand curve: it is based not mere­ly on a fan­ta­sy, but an out­right fal­la­cy.

Legions of econ­o­mists believe that the demand curve for a com­pet­i­tive firm is hor­i­zon­tal, but their belief is based on the most fun­da­men­tal of math­e­mat­i­cal errors: con­fus­ing a very small amount (an infin­i­tes­i­mal) with zero. The Trea­sury repeats this fallacy—without know­ing it is one—in its expla­na­tion of why a roy­al­ty reduces out­put lev­els but the RSPT won’t.

I sup­port the idea that min­ing com­pa­nies should pay a tax that dis­trib­utes some of the prof­its from min­ing to the wider Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty, and that this tax should be based on prices, rather than mere­ly on vol­umes sold. The min­ers have clear­ly made wind­fall prof­its in the last few years as prices for min­er­als have sky­rock­et­ed, and those prof­its should be shared with the wider com­mu­ni­ty since it, and not the min­ers, is the ulti­mate own­er of Aus­trali­a’s min­er­al resources.

How­ev­er I can’t go along with the Resource Super Prof­its Tax (RSPT) as it has been designed, and pre­cise­ly for the rea­son giv­en by Ross Git­tins in the SMH:

Chan­nel 7’s Today Tonight is doing an item on “Inter­est Only Mortgages”–like the prod­uct that ING has recent­ly promoted–and the whole hous­ing bub­ble issue.

They are look­ing for any­one who has been “burnt” by either an inter­est-only loan, or a loan that was pred­i­cat­ed on the expec­ta­tion that house prices would always rise–as is ING’s new product–who is will­ing to be inter­viewed about the expe­ri­ence on cam­era.

The item is being put togeth­er by James Thomas, who did the excellent–and yes, I do mean excel­lent!–“Chang­ing Times” on debt defla­tion in Feb­ru­ary of last year (unfor­tu­nate­ly the clip is no longer avail­able online). I can vouch for James’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism and tact: the item will be well con­struct­ed, and inter­vie­wees will be treat­ed well.

Mar­ket econ­o­mists have spent the past few months search­ing each major data release for con­fir­ma­tion of their hope that the econ­o­my is return­ing to growth and that a ‘sus­tain­able recov­ery’ is under­way.

Most cur­rent­ly argue that the fun­da­men­tals in Aus­tralia are good – low unem­ploy­ment, a strong recov­ery in equi­ty mar­kets (notwith­stand­ing the 14 per cent sell-off in the past month), a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of com­pa­nies’ results beat­ing expec­ta­tions and so on.

This pre­sen­ta­tion was not­ed by a blog mem­ber today. Take par­tic­u­lar note of slides 21–20 which com­pare the bal­ance sheets of US and UK banks to that of one Aus­tralian bank, the Com­mon­wealth.

How to Prof­it From the Com­ing Aussie Prop­er­ty Crash (and Bank­ing Cri­sis)

Also a quick note that the site’s serv­er crashed this morn­ing and had to be restored from back­ups. Sev­er­al blog com­ments were lost, includ­ing some from new mem­bers. These records of these new mem­bers might also have been lost, so if that applies to you, please rejoin and resend your com­ment.

A month ago some extra­or­di­nary head­lines appeared in the Fair­fax new­pa­pers. The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald ran with: “House prices to plateau as buy­ers flee in droves”.

Alan Kohler wrote at the time in Busi­ness Spec­ta­tor that ‘flee’ was too strong a word for what was hap­pen­ing – hous­ing lend­ing was con­tin­u­ing to fall in both num­ber and val­ue terms, but investors were con­tin­u­ing to bor­row strong­ly and prop up the mar­ket. How­ev­er, he did sug­gest that a price plateau in hous­ing looked like­ly.

Jim Stan­ford, the author of the pop­u­lar  Eco­nom­ics for Every­one (from which the car­toon to the left is tak­en), and I spoke at a dou­ble bill on the glob­al debt cri­sis for the ven­er­a­ble Syd­ney insti­tu­tion “Pol­i­tics in the Pub” last night.

We had a full house for an provoca­tive evening on why the Dis­mal Sci­ence is nei­ther nec­es­sar­i­ly Dis­mal, nor any­thing close to a Sci­ence, and why the debt cri­sis is still with us.

Jim, as well as being an out­stand­ing non-ortho­dox econ­o­mist, is also a very engag­ing speaker–as I whis­pered to the Chair (Pro­fes­sor Frank Stil­well, from Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty’s Depart­ment of Polit­i­cal Econ­o­my) while Jim spoke, he was a very hard act to fol­low!

This has just been post­ed on the Real World Eco­nom­ics Review

Revere Award for Eco­nom­ics for the 3 econ­o­mists who warned the world

Results

For Imme­di­ate Release

13 May 2010

Keen, Roubi­ni and Bak­er win Revere Award for Eco­nom­ics

Steve Keen (Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Syd­ney), receiv­ing more than twice as many votes as his near­est rival, has been judged the econ­o­mist who first and most cogent­ly warned the world of the com­ing Glob­al Finan­cial Cri­sis. He and 2nd and 3rd place fin­ish­ers Nouriel Roubi­ni (New York Uni­ver­si­ty) and Dean Bak­er (Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Pol­i­cy Research) have won the Revere Award for Eco­nom­ics.  The award, spon­sored by the Real World Eco­nom­ics Review Blog is named in hon­our of Paul Revere and his famous ride through the night to warn Amer­i­cans of the approach­ing British army.

“THE BURDEN OF DEBT: HOW SERIOUS & WHO WILL PAY?”

Speak­ers [each giv­ing 20 minute talks on the top­ic]:

• Dr Jim Stan­ford, Cana­di­an Auto Work­ers Union, author of ‘Eco­nom­ics for Every­one’ and pre­sen­ter of last year’s Ted Wheel­wright lec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney.
• Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Steve Keen, Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Syd­ney, author of DeBunk­ing Eco­nom­ics and recent­ly well pub­li­cised walk­er to the top of Mount Kosiosko.
• Chair: Frank Stil­well

Date: Fri­day, May 14, 2010

Time: 6:00pm – 7.30pm

Loca­tion: Gael­ic Club, Lev­el 1 upstairs/lift, 64 Devon­shire Street, Sur­ry Hills, Syd­ney

The Keen Walk to Kosciuszko was a fab­u­lous experience—as Matt Car­roll (one of the orga­niz­ers) put it, it was “the best hol­i­day ever”. That’s not to min­i­mize the effort involved: cov­er­ing 235 kilo­me­tres on foot in 8 days is no mean feat. But the com­bi­na­tion of great com­pa­ny, per­son­al suc­cess for all involved in an impres­sive phys­i­cal chal­lenge, love­ly scenery, excel­lent weath­er, and a cause that unit­ed a remark­able group of peo­ple, made The Walk far more plea­sure than pain.