Ponzi Maths–Part 1

Published in December 31st, 2008

This is an unplanned post that partly pre-empts what I’ll be writing in the February Debtwatch Report, where I will explain in full my theory of money creation in a pure credit economy. So this is somewhat out of sequence, and will undoubtedly be badly explained compared to what I put together for February.
I will [...]

Debunking Economics eBook available

Published in December 15th, 2008

Posted by Steve Keen in Uncategorized

94 Comments

Click on the cover to buy the eBook
Debunking Economics was first published in 2001 by Pluto Press (Australia) and Zed Books (UK). There has been renewed interest in it since I began warning of the impending financial crisis, and I decided to release the book in electronic format to make it more accessible (the hard copy [...]

The World’s Biggest Ponzi Scheme?

Published in December 13th, 2008

Posted by Steve Keen in USA

51 Comments

Two days ago the FBI indicted Bernie Madoff, principal of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, on securities fraud. Though the case has yet to run, in the indictment the FBI reported that Madoff confessed that his was “basically a giant Ponzi Scheme” that may have lost some extremely high net worth individuals over US$50 billion.
Madoff’s [...]

How the ‘Experts’ Missed the Crash: Philosophical Flaws, No Sense of History

Published in December 11th, 2008

Posted by Steve Keen in Uncategorized

51 Comments

University of Texas Economics Professor James Galbraith is a son of the great US Institutional economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and a leading non-orthodox economist in his own right. He has developed highly innovative methods to measure economic inequality that are well documented here; he is a strident critic of conventional economics; and he has been as [...]

I do not know anyone who predicted this course of events…

Published in December 10th, 2008

Posted by Steve Keen in Australia, RBA

20 Comments

Several people have commented on the speech by Glenn Stevens (for international readers, Stevens is the Governor of Australia’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia) yesterday in which he commented, inter alia, that:
“I do not know anyone who predicted this course of events. This should give us cause to reflect on how hard a [...]

Ross Gittins finally comes aboard

Published in December 8th, 2008

Posted by Steve Keen in Uncategorized

38 Comments

Ross Gittins finally comes aboard the debt-deflation train, with an article in today’s (December 8 2008) Sydney Morning Herald entitled ”It’s not inflation that did us in, it’s the borrowing“. For non-Australian readers, Ross has been a regular economic commentator for Sydney’s leading newspaper for about forty years.
His economic position in the past could be described as predominantly neoclassical, [...]

UK steps in the right direction

Published in December 4th, 2008

Posted by Steve Keen in UK

46 Comments

The UK Government has taken the first tentative steps towards a solution to this crisis with its decision today to give stressed borrowers an interest repayment holiday of up to two years (New scheme to help people at risk of repossession).
The scheme is limited in scope to households that suffer ”a significant and temporary loss of [...]