Comments on: And you think I’m ornery? The Dahlem Report

By: Good article by Ross Gittins on Economics and Equilibrium | Steve Keen's Debtwatch

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:50:01 +0000

[...] And you think I’m ornery? The Dahlem Report [...]

By: Archimedes’ Hot Tub » Blog Archive » Chicago Schooled, or How I spent my summer vacation, part one

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:09:27 +0000

[...] mention this year’s Dahlem Report (a good discussion and a link to the PDF of the report are here), in which eight economists accused economic scholars of being (gasp) out of touch with the real [...]

By: RommelDAK

RommelDAK — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:02:09 +0000

Amen, brother! I am sick and tired of us toiling in anonymity (as I mentioned in an AFEEMail post today). I am very grateful that you have worked so hard on this blog. I’ve been doing a small one, mainly for my non-economist friends (http://rommeldak.wordpress.com/). But what you are doing here is reaching many more people and is far more ambitious. Bless you for taking the time to run up our flag and try to take credit where credit is due!!!

By: Steve Keen

Steve Keen — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:08:27 +0000

Yes, it did lack that caveat. But I can understand why–so far as “the public” was ever aware, there was only ever “economics”. Actually, so far as the neoclassical majority of the profession was concerned, that was the case too: we were just a bunch of fringe loonies. I can accept that it might have been seen as diluting the message to put that qualification into such a

That’s one of the reasons why I dived into the public debate here in Australia well before the crisis hit, so that when it did I would have credibility with the public and gradually I could make the case that it was a particular “religious sect” in economics that was useless, but that there were alternatives. I wouldn’t say that Hyman Minsky is now a household name in Australia, but there is certainly a heightened awareness here that there are other schools of thought in economics.

By: RommelDAK

RommelDAK — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:51:39 +0000

While I applaud the sentiment in the article, I object to the repeated claim that “economics” failed to predict the crisis. It was Neoclassical/Mainstream economics that failed, not the Post Keynesians or Institutionalists, for example. In fact, I sent a note to Colander thanking him for his efforts but pointing out this error (I also included a reading list of articles on financial crisis from the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, the Journal of Economic Issues, and the Cambridge Journal of Economics).

That was a week ago. He never responded.

By: notthinking

notthinking — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:37:22 +0000

My comment on this post was inadvertently placed under Bravo Niall Ferguson. Not technologically challenged or anything, just not thinking.

By: ickers

ickers — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:50:11 +0000

On the academic front… I’ve no idea what the calibre of students admitted to undergraduate economics degrees is like, but I’ve assumed (okay, make that *hoped*) that it was fairly high.

Surely these students are intelligent enough to think critically about what they have/are being taught, especially since this neoclassical stuff is so flakey if you even just scratch the surface?

Could it just be that many graduates actually know that the theories they’ve been are quite flawed, but have just gone along with it all in the interests of obtaining a well paid career and the associated trappings?

By: ickers

ickers — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:26:48 +0000

GSM, Al49er & tommyt, just voicing my “hear hear” to your recent comments.

However, I’m interested to know what history you refer to regarding the timeframe for a turn around in such affairs. My own instinct tells me that the turn around could be quite swift – I’d have thought hungry poor people learn fast and don’t remain complacent for long! No foundations for this position though…

By: Steve Keen

Steve Keen — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:42:11 +0000

I agree! Many thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’ve put a blog entry up on it that’s probably already in your in-tray.

By: roylefamily

roylefamily — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:16:38 +0000

Great article in The Australain today. Niall Ferguson is a historian. He has just made a lovely little series called The Ascent of Money. well worth downloading. the article in the oz is the first public call for debt principle write downs that I have seen.

Perhaps an important day!

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25115869-643,00.html