Author Archives: Steve Keen

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.

The lack of expan­sion in the Aus­tralian pri­vate cred­it mar­kets is cer­tain­ly hav­ing an adverse effect on com­merce in the post 2008 finan­cial cri­sis peri­od. Annu­al pri­vate cred­it growth has aver­aged 3.5%, since it dropped down to sin­gle dig­it fig­ures in Octo­ber 2008.

Per­son­al cred­it and busi­ness cred­it have been the deadweight’s, aver­ag­ing an annu­al growth of ‑1% and ‑0.5% respec­tive­ly. Hous­ing cred­it has off­set this with an aver­age annu­al growth rate of 6.9% since Octo­ber 2008. How­ev­er, this has since slowed to an aver­age annu­al rate of 5.3% for the first 3 months of this year and is con­tin­u­ing on this slow­ing trend. With sig­nif­i­cant­ly less cred­it com­ing into the mar­ket, the Gov­ern­ment have had no choice but to com­pen­sate deficit spend­ing.

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: