“The Marxian view is that capitalistic economies are inherently unstable and that excessive accumulation of capital will lead to increasingly severe economic crises. Growth theory, which has proved to be empirically successful, says this is not true.
The capitalistic economy is stable, and absent some change in technology or the rules of the economic game, the [...]

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One of the reasons I’m still a bear on the economy is because the economists in the optimists camp are relying upon very bad economic theory. If that theory is telling them good times are ahead, that’s one of the best predictors of bad times you could have.
This isn’t because the optimists are bad economists, [...]

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I’m happy to admit that it’s very hard to hold a bear perspective, when all about there appear to be “green shoots”, yet according to my body clock it’s still hibernation time.
There are, however, four factors that keep me in my lair:

Good History;
Bad Economic Theory;
Good [...]

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I’ll be speaking at the Australian Museum’s regular monthly talk this coming Tuesday evening on the topic of “The Next Great Depression?”. In a nutshell, the details are:
Title: Museum Australia Monthly Talk
Location: Australian Museum (entry via William Street)
Start Time: 18:30
Date: 2009-08-25
End Time: 20:00
Bookings and prepayment are essential: call 02 9320 6225 to book.
The cost is [...]

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As noted earlier, I’m giving a brand new set of lectures on Behavioural Finance at UWS. I am taking a non-standard approach (surprise surprise) because I am dissatisfied with the texts in this area–even though it is generally a non-neoclassical realm.
The reason is that most Behavioural Finance texts  give too much credence to the neoclassical [...]

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Last month I spoke at a seminar on the financial crisis organised by The Whitlam Institute, in reply to a speech by Professor John Quiggin. Guy Debelle, the Assistant Governor (for Financial Markets) of the Reserve Bank of Australia, was the other discussant.
The Institute has put together a very professional video of the discussion, which [...]

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I’m speaking at the Australian Shareholders Association Investor Hour next Tuesday (August 18) at 12pm with the topic “The Market Crash: Origins and Prospects”.
I’ll take a long view of the financial data–going back to 1890–and explain the booms and crashes of stock markets as symptoms of debt bubbles and their bursting. From that point of [...]

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This is mainly a post for my active discussants, who are now suffering from the volume of debate here with 399 posts on the previous topic, and my own workload right now that is making writing a new post impossible.
I had hoped to post a new substantive column on Monday about recent economic and housing [...]

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