I support the idea that mining companies should pay a tax that distributes some of the profits from mining to the wider Australian community, and that this tax should be based on prices, rather than merely on volumes sold. The miners have clearly made windfall profits in the last few years as prices for minerals [...]

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Channel 7′s Today Tonight is doing an item on “Interest Only Mortgages”–like the product that ING has recently promoted–and the whole housing bubble issue. They are looking for anyone who has been “burnt” by either an interest-only loan, or a loan that was predicated on the expectation that house prices would always rise–as is ING’s [...]

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Market economists have spent the past few months searching each major data release for confirmation of their hope that the economy is returning to growth and that a ‘sustainable recovery’ is underway. Most currently argue that the fundamentals in Australia are good – low unemployment, a strong recovery in equity markets (notwithstanding the 14 per [...]

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This presentation was noted by a blog member today. Take particular note of slides 21-20 which compare the balance sheets of US and UK banks to that of one Australian bank, the Commonwealth. How to Profit From the Coming Aussie Property Crash (and Banking Crisis) Also a quick note that the site’s server crashed this [...]

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A month ago some extraordinary headlines appeared in the Fairfax newpapers. The Sydney Morning Herald ran with: “House prices to plateau as buyers flee in droves“. Alan Kohler wrote at the time in Business Spectator that ‘flee’ was too strong a word for what was happening – housing lending was continuing to fall in both [...]

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Jim Stanford, the author of the popular  Economics for Everyone (from which the cartoon to the left is taken), and I spoke at a double bill on the global debt crisis for the venerable Sydney institution “Politics in the Pub” last night. We had a full house for an provocative evening on why the Dismal [...]

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This has just been posted on the Real World Economics Review Revere Award for Economics for the 3 economists who warned the world Results For Immediate Release 13 May 2010 Keen, Roubini and Baker win Revere Award for Economics Steve Keen (University of Western Sydney), receiving more than twice as many votes as his nearest [...]

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“THE BURDEN OF DEBT: HOW SERIOUS & WHO WILL PAY?” Speakers [each giving 20 minute talks on the topic]: Dr Jim Stanford, Canadian Auto Workers Union, author of ‘Economics for Everyone’ and presenter of last year’s Ted Wheelwright lecture at the University of Sydney. Associate Professor Steve Keen, University of Western Sydney, author of DeBunking Economics and [...]

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The Keen Walk to Kosciuszko was a fabulous experience—as Matt Carroll (one of the organizers) put it, it was “the best holiday ever”. That’s not to minimize the effort involved: covering 235 kilometres on foot in 8 days is no mean feat. But the combination of great company, personal success for all involved in an [...]

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As we head towards the federal election, the term ‘housing shortage’ will be trotted out again and again by politicians. Their rhetoric will rely on the deeply ingrained received wisdom that Australia has a ‘housing shortage’, and no politician will want to do the hard work of differentiating between a genuine shortage in housing stock [...]

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