Steve Keen's Debtwatch

If you’re look­ing for my lat­est work, please click here to go to my Patre­on site. This site is main­tained for his­tor­i­cal rea­sons only.

I main­tain this site for his­tor­i­cal rea­sons only. If you’re look­ing for my lat­est work, please go to https://www.patreon.com/profstevekeen.

I dis­cuss a Mod­ern Debt Jubilee On Macro’n’Cheese today, and this is a quick expla­na­tion of how it could be done.

Jubilees were com­mon in antiq­ui­ty. The Lord’s Prayer did not orig­i­nal­ly say “And for­give us our sins, as we have for­giv­en those who sin against us”, but “And for­give us our debts, as we also have for­giv­en our debtors”. But an old-fash­ioned Jubilee would reward those who gam­bled with bor­rowed mon­ey, and thus effec­tive­ly penalise those who did not. It would also effec­tive­ly bank­rupt the banks, since their assets—our debts—would fall, while their liabilities—our deposits—would remain con­stant.

Dr. Keen,

I am won­der­ing if you have ever seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered issuance of Gisel­lian cur­ren­cy for coun­tries fac­ing unplayable debt (all of them, as far as I know).

The scheme I am imag­in­ing would have these govts pay­ing off bonds due with G‑currency. Bond­hold­ers would then, ASAP, spend it on real items in the econ­o­my, where it would even­tu­al­ly end up as wages, where work­ers would spend it, ASAP, on tax­es and con­sumer goods.

The demur­rage, say 12%/year (= 12 x 1% stamps)  would give this cur­ren­cy an annu­al veloc­i­ty of at least 12 since any hold­er of the cur­ren­cy would want to spend it before each month-end tax stamp would be due.

I have recent­ly estab­lished a Patre­on site https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen, where peo­ple can sup­port my research and advo­ca­cy work with dona­tions start­ing at $1/month. That is now where I will engage in con­ver­sa­tion in response to posts. So if any­one here wants to con­tin­ue a dia­logue with me and oth­ers, please sign up there.

This site was flood­ed by a large num­ber of spam users at the same time as I became unable to main­tain my own role in dis­cus­sions here, since I am just too damn busy in Lon­don. This has caused the site to be sus­pend­ed three times by its ISP for per­for­mance issues. One more time and the account will be banned. I have there­fore decid­ed to delete all users on this site, bar those who have made posts (which is a hand­ful of indi­vid­u­als of course).

I’m tak­ing part in a debate on one of the major top­ics in this year’s elec­tion, Brex­it, on May 31st at 7.30pm at Can­ham, 40 Sheen Lane, Lon­don SW14 8LW. The oth­er speak­ers are Frances Cop­po­la, and Angus Arm­strong.

• Frances Cop­po­la is an eco­nom­ic com­men­ta­tor in print and fre­quent­ly on the BBC.
• Angus Arm­strong is direc­tor of macro-eco­nom­ics at one of the top research insti­tu­tions, the Nation­al Insti­tute of Eco­nom­ic and Social Research found­ed in 1938.

Click here to buy tick­ets for this event.

I’m freez­ing this site and mov­ing to both Patre­on (https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen) and a new web­site http://www.profstevekeen.com/. There are sev­er­al rea­sons:

• This site’s signup secu­ri­ty failed, and some­thing like 50,000 bot-users have signed up.
  • It’s just too cum­ber­some in Word­Press to delete them selec­tive­ly from here, so it’s eas­i­er to move to a new, clean site;
• I used to be very active in dis­cus­sions here, but the demands on my time became so exces­sive over time that I have vir­tu­al­ly stopped par­tic­i­pat­ing;

One of my Patrons posed a very good ques­tion to me: in a nut­shell, how would I respond to a politi­cian who took my ideas and per­vert­ed them for polit­i­cal gain? Here’s Andre’s full query:

Hi Steve, thank you, you’ve giv­en me the gift of some of the most impor­tant ideas and expla­na­tions I’ve come across in my life­time.

I was won­der­ing how you might respond to a politi­cian who mis­reads your lat­est book, and then declares:

1.  Peo­ple will love me, because Steve Keen says I can become known as a mas­ter of man­ag­ing my coun­try’s econ­o­my by engi­neer­ing a pri­vate debt boom

Help me rebuild eco­nom­ics at https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen

Can we avoid anoth­er finan­cial cri­sis?

In 2008, con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ics led us blind­fold­ed into the great­est eco­nom­ic cri­sis since the Great Depres­sion. Almost a decade lat­er, with the glob­al econ­o­my wal­low­ing in low growth that they can’t explain, main­stream econ­o­mists are reluc­tant­ly com­ing to realise that their mod­els are use­less for under­stand­ing the real world.