Steve Keen's Debtwatch

I men­tioned Wynne God­ley’s pre­scient obser­va­tions about the Euro back in 1992 in a debate on the Mind Your Busi­ness pro­gram on Ire­land’s RTE Radio 1 about half an hour ago. God­ley’s remarks–no doubt seen as extrem­ist when he uttered them–have proven to be utter­ly prophet­ic:

As recent­ly as May 2011, the Aus­tralian Bud­get State­ment fore­cast only a grad­ual decline in iron ore prices. “The terms of trade are fore­cast to increase 19¼ per cent in 2010-11, under­pinned by strong increas­es in the prices of Australia’s key non-rur­al com­mod­i­ty exports, before declin­ing grad­u­al­ly over 2011-12 and 2012–13 as increas­ing glob­al com­mod­i­ty sup­ply starts to match growth in demand,” it said.

As is not news to any­one today, the decline in Australia’s terms of trade in the first three months of finan­cial year 2012–13 has been any­thing but grad­ual: it has fall­en five times as much in three months as Trea­sury expect­ed to hap­pen over the entire year.

I’m being inter­viewed about the Fed­er­al Reserve’s QE3 announce­ment today on BBC Radio:

6.15AM GMT on BBC Radio 4 BBC Busi­ness Dai­ly LIVE
8.32AM GMT on BBC World Ser­vice

If you’re not in the UK, you can lis­ten online:

BBC Radio 4 LIVE

BBC World Ser­vice

This is prob­a­bly the most detailed sem­i­nar I have giv­en on my views on mon­e­tary macro­eco­nom­ics. I begin with the data that, back in Decem­ber 2005, led me to expect that a huge eco­nom­ic cri­sis was immi­nent: the ratio of pri­vate debt to GDP. Then I explain why this ratio mat­ters, in con­trast to the argu­ments that Neo­clas­si­cal econ­o­mists put that only the dis­tri­b­u­tion of debt mat­ters. This takes me through the empir­i­cal data, the the­o­ries of Schum­peter and Min­sky, and the math­e­mat­ics need­ed to prove that “aggre­gate demand equals income plus the change in debt” is cor­rect, and that this does not involve dou­ble-count­ing.

The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald has a deal for aca­d­e­mics and stu­dents right now that lets aca­d­e­mics pur­chase a year’s sub­scrip­tion for $60 for dig­i­tal and print (deliv­ered on cam­pus) and $40 for dig­i­tal alone.

I think that’s excel­lent val­ue, and I’ve signed up (to the digital–no sense wast­ing the trees). I’d urge oth­er aca­d­e­mics and stu­dents to do like­wise, for sev­er­al rea­sons:

• The val­ue alone. $60 for a year’news­pa­pers is cheap! I’m also pay­ing  $8 a week for the New York Times (dig­i­tal only). That is at the lev­el where I might con­sid­er de-sub­scrib­ing, and putting up with their lim­it of ten free reads a week;

The “From Alpha to Omega” pod­cast record­ed the fol­low­ing inter­view with me about the “Mod­ern Debt Jubilee”. We dis­cuss a lot more than just that–starting with why peo­ple who are inter­est­ed in Hyman Min­sky’s work should NOT read Sta­bi­liz­ing an Unsta­ble Econ­o­my, but should instead start with either John May­nard Keynes or Can “It” Hap­pen Again?

Amer­i­cans aren’t known for irony or sur­re­al­ism, but one of the endur­ing­ly sur­re­al and iron­ic pop songs is The Eagles’“Hotel Cal­i­for­nia”. Writ­ten as a satire of Amer­i­can excess, its lyrics bear an uncan­ny resem­blance to the trap the nations of Europe now find them­selves in – espe­cial­ly its final stan­za:

Last thing I remem­ber, I was
Run­ning for the door
I had to find the pas­sage back
To the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man,
“We are pro­grammed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can nev­er leave!”

To read this post, click here.

Tony Abbott recent­ly pledged him­self to restore the “Gold­en Age of Pros­per­i­ty” that Aus­tralia enjoyed under John Howard’s prime min­is­ter­ship:
“That’s why the longer this gov­ern­ment lasts, the bet­ter the Howard gov­ern­ment looks and that’s why the Howard gov­ern­ment now looks like it cre­at­ed a gold­en age of pros­per­i­ty, which is lost,” Abbott said in a speech to the South Aus­tralian Lib­er­al Par­ty.

Click here for this sto­ry

I gave the talk below last Sun­day at UWS’s Open Day, as an into­duc­tion to eco­nom­ics for prospec­tive uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents. Prepar­ing it made me reflect on the great good for­tune I had to be appoint­ed to UWS.

This might evoke a “Huh?” response from the usu­al sus­pects on such issues–why be pleased about being appoint­ed to a sec­ond-rate Uni­ver­si­ty (and in an out-of-the-way place like Syd­ney to boot)? It’s because the Eco­nom­ics & Finance pro­gram at UWS has been almost unique amongst eco­nom­ics depart­ments around the world in delib­er­ate­ly pur­su­ing a “plu­ral­ist” approach to eco­nom­ics.

Bernie Mad­off, is often the first per­son that comes to mind when you men­tion the words Ponzi scheme these days, in the midst of the ongo­ing finan­cial cri­sis. The Mad­off Ponzi scheme fab­ri­cat­ed almost $65 bil­lion of mon­ey that didn’t exist. The expo­nen­tial rela­tion­ship between find­ing new investors mon­ey to fund­ing the old investors overzeal­ous and unsus­tain­able gains were bound to come crash­ing down as new investors were nowhere to be seen,having lost con­fi­dence in the mar­kets in the after­math of the 2008 crash. One would think that investors would have learnt their les­son on when returns are too high and can not be jus­ti­fied by any legit­i­mate mar­ket­place, but old habits die hard in the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis!