Comments on: Fabulous attack on neoclassical economics by Anatole Kaletsky

By: Alex Mitchell goes for the jugular | Steve Keen's Debtwatch

Alex Mitchell goes for the jugular | Steve Keen's Debtwatch — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:26:28 +0000

[...] “the bottom feeders” repackaged for popular consumption through the media (see Fabulous attack on neoclassical economics by Anatole Kaletsky for my commentary, and Economists are the forgotten guilty men for the original article). But [...]

By: reason

reason — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:46:34 +0000

Steve Keen
Boughten seems to arguing that a common thread of all the big crashes is land speculation rather than leveraged speculation in general. I’m not sure whether he is a Georgian or comes from a completely different viewpoint of his own.

By: reason

reason — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:44:22 +0000

Steve
I wasn’t so much referring to Kaletsky as to the paper linked to by roylefamily from Andrew Boughten that starts with some pretty strange anti Keynes extremism.

By: Philip

Philip — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:30:33 +0000

Cassander,

That’s a good joke. I’ve heard Steve (or McCauley) says that if engineering were economics, the bridge would collapse.

What I find interesting about this joke is that engineers would be put in jail if they built something like that and it collapsed. However, if neoclassical economists preside over massive inequality and devastation due to public and private policy based upon their economic theory, they walk away free.

If economists were actually held accountable, Milton Friedman (Chile), Jeffrey Sachs (Russia), Greenspan (U.S.) would all be given life sentences for devastating those countries. After our housing bubble bursts, the whole RBA board should be sent to jail.

Steve,

Check your email, I’ve resent the original graph plus another.

By: Steve Keen

Steve Keen — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:10:46 +0000

That’s more my interest in it Reason: all overthrows start with anger, and the fact that commentators like Kaletsky are starting to get angry at neoclassical economics is a very good sign.

By: reason

reason — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:26:23 +0000

roylefamily
that article starts badly (with irrelevant ad hominims) and ends badly (sort of fading away without having really offered any solutions) the middle was interesting and promising.

By: Bullturnedbear

Bullturnedbear — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:53:33 +0000

After the earthquake the conclusion would be that neoclassical economics works perfectly because now everything is back in equilibrium. And very quickly I might add.

Three cheers for growth and wealth. What else matters.

By: Cassander

Cassander — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:24:10 +0000

Q:
What would happen if engineers designed a bridge the way neoclassical economists have designed their model of the global economy?

A:
- The bridge would have foundations of dried shaving foam labelled “Assume the presence of reinforced concrete here”
- 10% of the structure would consist of lengths of cotton thread bearing sticky-taped notes saying “IOU one girder|stringer|cable|etc”
- the remaining 90% would consist of large areas of empty space that are annotated on the plans as “Will be filled by endogenous creation of decking” or “Section not required because structure is in equilibrium”

Yet, paradoxically, when the first sparrow attempted to perch on the bridge and caused it to crumble into dust, its collapse would cause a magnitude 10.2 earthquake and devastate everything within a 1000km radius.

By: Cassander

Cassander — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:18:52 +0000

Yep, there are definitely some Damascene conversions happening. Fortunately most people’s cognitive abilities, hearing and vision (especially retrospective vision) sharpen greatly when their hip-pocket nerves are suddenly & unexpectedly relieved of the pressure from large wads of speculative capital gains!

By: roylefamily

roylefamily — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:04:40 +0000

It looks like the debate has started.

http://business.theage.com.au/business/wanted-a-new-economic-theory-20090206-7z7h.html?page=-1