Apr15
This is something members of the blog won’t be amazed to hear, but it’s a milestone nonetheless: Debtwatch has just had its first two days with more than 10,000 unique readers:
There are also something in the vicinity of 500 RSS readers (I would appreciate finding out how many there are right now, from anyone more technically savvy than I am on these things). Oh, and over 1250 subscribers, making about 100 posts a day in a very active–and very affable–discussion.
I can’t think of any significant way to sign off here, so I’ll just take my hat off and thank you all for participating.
Why the sudden surge of activity on the 14th and 15th?
My guess is a surge after the Easter lull–so it’s a bit of an anomaly, but nonetheless one based on a solid trend. Growth has been about 10% per month for some time, so a breakthrough to over 10,000 was only a matter of time.
Hi Steve, your detailed and facts based approach is what keeps me and no doubt all the other readers coming back here.
It’s great to read critiques of our economy based on facts and quantitative research rather than the kind of faith based reasoning the Austrian school has to offer.
When I come across people who ask me about the current crisis, your roving cavaliers paper is where I refer them to first.
You should produce a graph of the number of visits since you first established DebtDeflation. That would give everyone a good idea of how popular the website is.
Maybe Google Analytics?
http://www.brandingrant.com/how-to-track-wordpress-comments-rss-in-analytics.html
I guess it can be a bit tricky, for example, I find your updates via RSS and then I open up your page. So, this could count as two hits maybe?
Hi Steve,
I think the spike is because your latest post was put up on Prudentbear yesterday and The Automatic Earth today.
Those sites get a lot of traffic and many would have clicked through.
Keep it up Steve, I enjoy this site immensely.
Well done Steve. You are doing all Australians a great public service as a leading economic intellectual. Keep the contrarian analysis going and it won’t be contrarian much longer!
Neo-classicism is on the brink of abject failure and I am sensing increasing panic from the masses in relation to property prices. Absent further keynsian stimuli by the Federal government we might begin to see some serious asset price deflation. Painful as this will be for many, it’s the first (and ultimately inevitable) step in redressing the major imbalances of the past 10 or more years. (Sea of cheap liquidity, 100% LVRs and so on).
Also saw a link to the previous [transcript] post on Yves Smith’s http://www.nakedcapitalism.com which will have broadened the reader-base somewhat…
Growth of 10% a month!
Does that qualify us as a Ponzi scheme?
The surge in numbers could also be due to link to your most recent post on Micheal Pettis site:
http://mpettis.com/2009/04/new-trade-and-reserve-numbers-from-china/
It seems that he is one of your growing legions of fans as well. Highly recommended for people interested in China
Steve,
You are doing a great job.
The main barrier for me to study economics was that it was extremely boring. But the reality bites us all and we cannot ignore it. You are making these ideas accessible for people like me.
I think that it might be possible to convince a significant number of engineers and IT people to dynamic models much easier than orthodox economists.
Once the momentum is built and the concepts you are talking about become obvious the pressure might rise to reform the global financial system. Especially when the middle-class assets and income are depleted.
The momentum may be built exactly in the same way the pressure is rising to reduce our destructive impact on the global environment and climate.
No more “wealth creation” this was just Ponzi.
I may be obsessed with computers but I think that it might be beneficial to create an open-source project aiming at enabling mathematically prepared non-economists to run the models and fiddle with them. You have already published a lot of detailed information how to do it. I may give it a go in a few weeks time. Hope it will not be too late.
Now that’s a suitably ironic twist! -:)
That’s one of my objectives AK: economists don’t have the intellectual legitimacy to monopolise “economic modelling”, and engineers are the ones best placed to do what economists have failed to do–think dynamically about the economy. The project is a great idea.
Congratulations Dr Keen on the milestone!! Quality debate, Quality facts,Gee I wonder if the the “mass” media still think that people won’t read “intellectual” content!!A new era of “quality” as well as economics coming our way perhaps??
Congratulations Steve and well deserved .
You always recognise the truth when you hear it. That’s why I visit your blog.
Steve,
Your Google Page Rank is now 5/10. This is a log scale so you are doing very well! Also, according to Google you now have 10,800 pages linking to you now! To give you an idea of how successful you are, my website at http://www.affordablewebsitedesign.com.au/ only has a google page rank of 3/10 and I have been working on my Google Page rank for four years now.
Steve – with regards to economic modelling by Engineers, you may have come across the works of Warren Brussee – a retired US engineer and Six Sigma specialist who predicted debt deflation (although I don’t think he used the term) back in 2004 with impeccable timing. Warren applies strict engineering maths and models to economics. I have been following his work for about as long as yours.
Warrens 2004 book “The Second Great Depression” has now been updated: http://tinyurl.com/d44dh2
He also publishes a twice-monthly blog: http://wbrussee.wordpress.com
Yes, those green shoots of new growth just keep sprouting up everywhere. It’s a new bull alright;
“ECONOMIC REPORT
Biggest recessionary output drop since World War II
U.S. production falls 1.5% in March, despite bounce in autos and utilities”
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/biggest-drop-us-industrial-output/story.aspx?guid=%7BA50EFF3A-D75B-46BB-84E8-63A004697FE1%7D&dist=google
Congrats Steve,
When you have interesting and well researched ideas people will find you (word of mouth advertising is still very powerfull in this ‘modern’ age). A certain amount of credit also needs to to taken by all who contribute as this is what keeps my interest up to keep coming back to learn more.
Barvo Steve
Bravo all.
I will put on my neo-classical economics hat (you know the tall conical one with a big D on the front) and provide an analysis of Steve’s website.
Supply and demand are always in equilibrium – as demand grows for your site the content will grow at the same rate – look forward to working 10% more each month Steve.
There are no finite limits to your website.
Growth in traffic will be linear (no room for that mumbo jumbo dynamic stuff here).
Growth (at 10% a month) will continue through to June 2013 with over 1,000,000 visitors a day.
Continued linear growth will see more than 10,000,000,000 visitors a day by 2020.
By July 2022 this site will have over 100,000,000,000 visits a day with everyone on the planet visiting at least 12 times a day.
Eat your heart out Google.