http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/11/18/clearing-up-this-mess/

Funny how the academics got it right in predicting/warning what was about to happen – whereas the Reserve Bank speaker seemed to ‘sit on the fence’ and the Treasury speaker seemed to think nothing would touch Australia, and anyway it was all over really.

His speech had the financial crisis all in the past! I could quote reams from it, but just a few will do. ‘While the immediate crisis is fading…’ And ‘…while plenty of problems remain, the global financial system is not hurtling towards destruction.’ And ‘… there must have been powerful offsetting forces which protected the Australian financial system from serious injury’. Ouch! I wonder if he would feel embarrassed now if he ever re-read his speech? He’s probably become one of the “Hoocoodanode” meme that are bobbing up all over the place now.

This of couse is arse covering in the extreme- as I’m certain ALL these well known commenters bought the spiel hook line and sinker – choosing to ignore the great scamathon they knew was being perpetrated by these snake oil salesemen and feeding large at the corperate trough doing so. Whilst the Ponzi economy delivered good numbers, their job was easy- just report the good news. Now it’s all turned to crap and exposed as filthy DEBT , “Hoocoodanode?- certainly not Moi if the boffins got it wrong”.

Which just about sums up economic MSM in Australia- entirely bloody useless and no worth at all.

Best to keep that in mind when dealing with any investment options going forward. They have no clue at all other than what the snakes in suites tell them. In that realm I also put Craig James, Evans at Westpac et al. All of them media prima donna’s talking their book and delivering a spin.

http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2008/12/ive-been-wrong.html

Thanks to you all for your blogs. My knowledge is growing all the time!

To ‘GSM’ re your post of Dec 22nd.

Thank you very much for your link to the “Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin”.
- have a look people.

As I mentioned before having believed for a long time, from the ’sociological’ perspective, that things had to go ‘ass up’, and then to find the likes of our home grown Steve Keen, the US’s Peter Schiff (and others)put all the flesh and detailed explanation in forecasts dating back a number of years, has been a fantastic revelation.

This site for which ‘GSM’ provided the link is yet another fantastic resource with a great deal of detail and apparently very accurate running forecasts back to 2006 and earlier.

I do not have a spare €200’s for a subscription and am more than happy with Steve’s very excellent postings, forecasting and proposed papers on the correct structure for future systems, along with some very informative postings by fellows to this site.

I remain stunned notwithstanding the very few
‘coming outs’ among journalists – and for the life of me I cannot understand, how ‘the people in power’, governments, business, regulartory bodies etc – someone, anyone, even the middle level office boy – hasn’t twigged and began work to shine a light in the dark ivory towers.

On the otherhand it is not quite so surprising to me to see the the general populace ‘remain oblivious’, given that I have always subscribed to the belief that at least 85% of the population are politically ignorant and bereft of any interest to read, research and learn the truth, not only of what is going on in the world around them, but how it is being powered and manipulated.

So we have Kevin and Wayne et al, feeding out just the sort of remedy the plebs are looking for : – “here go and spend some money”
whilst no doubt behind-the-scenes, saying to one another in the Ivory Castle,
“yes this is definitely the way to go, we do not want to spook the peasants with the truth (about which we don’t have much flamin idea in any event) and because Australia is ’special’ we will be somewhat protected from all of this ‘passing nastiness’ and have a ’soft landing’”

It is all simply so incredible – it is almost surreal.
2009 will certainly prove
“we live in interesting times”

How bad will depend on (1) Luck (2) Govt, especially Federal Govt, intervention .. but it has to be smart intervention.

Luck we can do nothing about, but sadly the Federal Govt is in ga-ga land. Not only do they not have a plan C, I doubt they have even talked about a Plan A (what will they do about all the privately owned infrastructure if the holders go under?).

Unfortunately, for those who hoped otherwise, this is a dyed in the wool neo-liberal Govt, and as such sees everything through that very distorted prism. Bit of a nip and tuck here, say the right things and everything will go back to BAU. House prices will rise again, debt will increase, but under the neo-liberal model private debt has no meaning. Only public debt is a no-no.

They will go into deficit, but will try to ‘balance the books’, by some nasty cuts in areas they think will have little political impact. The usual candidates will be rounded up, science and research, ABC, ‘hidden’ infrastructure, rail, Aboriginal spending, etc.

How they have dealt with carbon trading and Federal education spending, CSIRO, CDEP, etc, sums them pretty much up.

So its going to be a rocky road ahead for all of us … well unless you are a big polluter of course.

back in late November, when Chris Joye was peddling his views on another blog site, I wrote a rebuttal to his views. The link to it is here http://economics.com.au/?p=1891#comment-133644

I never got a response to my view on why his analysis was missing the point.

I am a retired physicist, interested in economics, as well as too many other things.

In the two weeks since Steve Keen’s post, I think about three of the 80-odd respondents welcomed the electronic republication of the book, and one of these, Gordon, indicated his intention to do the hard work of reading it. But there seems to have been no discussion of the book’s content.

When Margaret Throsby interviewed Steve recently on ABC Classic FM, I wanted the book ASAP. Finally a secondhand bookseller gave me a paperback copy for $60, when his embarrassment about the cost to him led to seek only a $5 margin. Perhaps Margaret drove up the market!

While waiting for the book, I read Steve’s papers on endogenous creation of money. These papers written for academic audiences were remarkably readable to someone outside of the field. This was due to such civilised features as explaining terms clearly and minimising specialist jargon.

Then on reading Steve’s paper on the non-conservation of money [see the papers in the Theory part of this blog], the light dawned. Good double entry bookkeeping to account for transactions of firm, worker and banker, including the money-creating fiat of the latter, yielded a model analogous to two models I had studied as a physicist. Money in each account was analogous:
(a) In the first model, a micro-scale case, to a store of electrons or holes in the crystal structure of a mineral, and
(b) In the second model, a macro-scale case, to a store of water or other material in the landscape.

In case “a” the developers used the same numerical technique [generic ODE solver] as Steve appears to use to solve the analogous equations in economics. Even more interestingly, in case “b” the developer shared Steve’s intention to use macro-scale data, rather than much up-front ideology, in developing a dynamic model of a complex system that was otherwise rather intractable.

At a later date, I would like to ask Steve questions about details of numerical technique, perhaps in another forum.

Returning to the book, the mind that wrote the surprisingly readable academic papers also wrote the book. For now, I shall comment on Chapter 1. This outlines the content of the book, which comprises both a detailed exposition of mainstream (neoclassical) economics, and a detailed debunking of the same. The purpose is to spare the reader the task of finding and reading “dozens of books and hundreds of journal articles”. Anticipated readers include economics students, professional economists (including the mainstream variety, to give them a good summary of what they are up against) , and “the intelligent lay reader”.

Despite acknowledging the difficulty of the reader’s task, the author has a vision of of the lay reader mastering the subject. We don’t have to find and interpret the myriad of books and papers. And there is helpful advice to treat the book as a reference work, and thus start with parts that are relatively easy or of particular interest to the individual reader.

My related suggestion is to undertake the “significant intellectual exertion” with relaxed perseverance, reading or pondering a little and often, rather than with anxious struggle. During this exertion our spirits can be refreshed, by Steve’s vision for what lay readers can achieve, and by his “guarantee that mainstream economists will hate the irreverent tone of this book”.

Please get on with the reading, folks, and come back with questions and comments about the book.