The webinar organised by Phil Dobbie for BTNet went over very well this morning, with about 80 attendees and a lively discussion mediated by Phil. Unfortunately a power outage meant that GoToMeeting‘s recording of the presentation only commenced half way through, so to make amends Phil and I re-recorded it this afternoon. We lost some of the interactivity, but the information comes through very well in this format.
To see this re-recording, please click on either of the following links:
Phil Dobbie’s BTNet page “Aussie Rules”; or
A direct link to GoToMeeting.
You have to register with GoToMeeting to see the recording, but it’s well worth it. I found the medium and the software so effective that I plan to use it here–or possibly on the Centre for Economic Stability when that’s up and running–as a way of giving regular web lectures.
I used this PowerPoint slideshow (this is the PDF), and these Excel worksheets to illustrate one of the basic points, that it’s not just the level of debt, or its rate of change that matters, but the rate of change of the rate of change of debt: you can have a recession simply because the rate of change of debt slows down–even if debt is still growing–and a boom because the rate of decline of debt slows down–even if debt is falling. The files here are:
- A basic example (with a “Goldilocks” economy in which GDP is unaffected by the change of Debt–thanks to blog member bb who first developed an example like this in the discussion on this blog);
- The US in the 1930s
- The US now
- Australia now
On another note, I am getting closer to formally declaring the Centre for Economic Stability open for business. We have formed an Non-Profit Association, it is now registered for tax exemption as a charitable research institution, and shortly we’ll also be registered to offer tax-deductibility for donations. Once that last step is in place I will try to move a lot of the activity across to that organisation, and I’ll also put out a call for membership at the rate (decided by the original meeting of the Association) of A$100 p.a. for those with wage or other full-time income, and A$25 p.a. for others.
I hope that a reasonable proportion of the now almost 6,000 members of this blog will sign up. The ambition of the Centre is to enable the non-orthodox research that I do into monetary dynamics to be developed more effectively, and for the Centre to become an empirically based alternative to the rather ideologically focused “think tanks” (“opinion tanks”?) that tend to dominate the public discourse on economics today.
It is helgenome, and both have to be done. I am a “one man band” on this at present, but the Centre is a means to make this both more collective and hopefully to raise the resources needed to expand the workforce. We formed it back in March prior to the Walk to Kosciuszko, and progress has been steady but slow on bringing it into full being–largely because I am a one man band (though aided by Matt Carroll on this front).
@Steve Keen, @Philip and anyone else!
Hi everyone.
I know this is not the main concern of the posters, so I apologize in advance for bringing this here, but knowing that Steve is interested in the history of economic thought and suspecting that Philip and perhaps some others might be as well, I would like to ask for pointers (articles, lectures, lecture notes, etc.) explaining what, if any, is the relationship between Say’s Law and Walras’s Law.
I am aware that, at least since the 1970s, starting with a William Baumol article on its true meaning, a lot has been written on Say (including Steve’s “Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, Say no More”).
However, I haven’t seen much debate about Walras’s Law, even though, to me, it seems that there is a clear affinity between what is usually thought of Say’s Law of Markets and Walras’s. After all, they seem to deal on quite similar notions.
Steve,
“There is Alternative” to that business model where someone gives “free” use of the closed software/platform for a bit of “trust” and obviously a lot of publicity.
To me there’s nothing wrong on insisting that I have to buy or constrain myself to “this or that” if I want to get more “free” stuff.
But I usually don’t buy and don’t subscribe. I can find a workaround or an alternative product. It is not that I’m against proprietary software in general but I don’t like the bundling strategy which restricts my freedom of choice.
I also don’t like proprietary protocols and closed standards. This poisons the industry I work for. I agree 100% with Alan.
Let me work out a few things and I’ll be back. In the meantime could you have a quick look at
http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/
please?
Web conferencing is cool – it can save a lot of petrol and possibly ruin a few airlines. This has a potential to be the game changer for some social initiatives so I may want to convince someone else to embrace this technology. Time spent on studying these solutions won’t be wasted. Now they are much more mature than in 2005 when I was involved last time and the broadband penetration is much higher.
Hi Marco,
Walras’s Law is Say’s Law with the Emperor’s New Clothes added. That’s the main point of my “Nudge Nudge”, though I didn’t shout it loudly there. Borderline Neoclassicals like Robert Clower distinguish the two, but I argue they’re one and the same.
That looks pretty interesting ak, thanks. Might give it a trial run in a month or so here.
Thanks Steve,
“That’s the main point of my ‘Nudge Nudge’, though I didn’t shout it loudly there”.
Yes, I noticed the affinity.
Is there any general, textbook kind of exposition of Walras’s work that can be freely downloaded from the Net? It doesn’t need to be advanced and preferably not critical.
I have one side of the argument, and I would like to hear the other side, so as to make my own mind.
In its Say formulation this is important in most of Marxian economics.
Hi It’s a first time I comment, but I been follow this bloog for more than an year now. It’s very informative and I would like to say thanks for Steve Keen and for his great work.
On this week’s Financial Sense Newshour, Nicole lays out her ominous thesis of a coming deflationary depression, made worse by peak oil. Nicole believes that the depression will cause demand for energy to go down, creating further energy shortages and less and less economic growth.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=33
Again thanks very much..and sorry about my english as it’s not my first language.
For Windows users who want to download an offline copy of the webinar, follow these steps:
- look for GetASFStream on the internet, and download + install it.
- click on the video link on the Gotomeeting page
- select “save as” instead of trying to view the video
- look for the file just saved (.asx), and open it with notepad.
- look for a text string similar to the one below, and select + copy it (without the quotes)
mms://a981.v235432.c23543.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/981/23543/v0001/citrixvar.download.akamai.com/23543/www/278/978/4734564696658278978/1-4734564696658278978-12ad6048c57.wmv
- Paste that string in the first line of GetASFStream aplication
- Click on start, and presto, a few minutes later, a 57.05MB WMV file will be on your HD to view at your convenience.
If Steve is OK with the idea, I can post a free copy on rapidshare to save you the hassle above…
Gus
You could try Dixon at U Melb:
http://mercury.ecom.unimelb.edu.au/rdixon/walproof.html
He has another paper where he argued that Keynes couldn’t have meant what he did about Say’s Law without making a logical error since Walras’ Law is incontrvertible. Of course I argued that Keynes’s target was exactly what Dixon calls Walras’ Law.
Marx directly contradicts Says Law (and Walras) with his C-M-C, M-C-M+ formulation of the circuits of production.
Thanks virgule,
If that’s do-able then it should be legal (I’m sure GoTo could have disabled the “Save As” option if they had wanted to), so please go ahead.
Steve, according to my calculations from your figures above Australia’s Debt to GDP ratio has actually been decreasing in the last couple of years.
2006: 137%
2007: 145%
2008: 156%
2009: 154%
2010: 152%
If I calculated this correctly isn’t it a sign that it is possible to reduce your debt to GDP ratio but still maintain economic growth?
Steve,
Thanks for the link. Just what I had in mind! I will check for the article as well.
“Marx directly contradicts Says Law (and Walras) with his C-M-C, M-C-M+ formulation of the circuits of production”.
Yes, he does. However, while discussing the labour theory, some Marxists (for instance, Prof. Devine) have attached a tatonment-like process to the market, similar to what Walras had in mind.
In my opinion, this could easily lead to a contradiction, both with Marx himself said and with what contemporary critics of Say and Walras have argued.
Brett, most of the change was the conversion of business debt to equity. I assume as this wasn’t speculative debt it was all fairly painless. We have also expanded public debt, and have the resources boom. As nothing lasts for ever, you can only patch things up for so long as the need for exponential increase in debt will eventually make it impossible to keep the economy under control.
To some extent that’s possible brett, if you keep the acceleration–or deceleration!–issue under control. But in means a long drawn-out process of reducing debt and a long drawn out period of below long-term growth. Our recent growth spurt came from a return to leverage by the household sector, if the savings ratio data is anything to go by.
“To some extent that’s possible brett, if you keep the acceleration–or deceleration!–issue under control. But in means a long drawn-out process of reducing debt and a long drawn out period of below long-term growth”
Given the other possibilities I’ve been hearing…this one sound pretty good!
“I often find that products that are available on it (such as Mathcad) don’t have any peer on other operating systems in terms of the UI.”
I don’t know much about this type of software, but you might not be aware of these alternatives:
http://en.smath.info/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=561
http://sourceforge.net/projects/comppad/
“PS Just checked out Webex: it has a limit of 25 attendees. GoToSeminar caters for up to 1,000.”
I am missing something here. I thought GoToMeeting had a fifteen attendee limit (for the same price – sure you can get a thousand attendees for 500 USD per month):
http://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/gotomeeting_pricing
I do agree that there is nothing magic about the technology involved (meaning good free alternatives will emerge soon).
“copy the location mentioned in the asx file and download the stream to a file using mimms as wget doesn’t know how to deal with the streaming protocol (mimms needs to be installed separately)
mimms mms://a981.v235432.c23543.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/981/23543/v0001/citrixvar.download.akamai.com/23543/www/278/978/4734564696658278978/1-4734564696658278978-12ad6048c57.wmv
Note. This process is slow.
I end up having a wmv file (almost 60 MB) which I can play using mplayer”
Don’t need to do all that. Mplayer itself can get and save the file:
$ mplayer -dumpfile sk-20100903.wmv -dumpstream mms://a981.v235432.c23543.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/981/23543/v0001/citrixvar.download.akamai.com/23543/www/278/978/4734564696658278978/1-4734564696658278978-12ad6048c57.wmv
(without the -dumpfile option, mplayer will just save the file to stream.dump)
Oops. Meant to save the file as sk-20100903.wmv. I can fix that, but can’t edit my comment above.
I can alter your previous message grumpy, if you like, so that it will say sk-20100903.wmv. Let me know.
Yes, please change it (need to be more careful posting after midnight). And get rid of my comment 43 (and this one).
I was logged into the seminar using a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard and it worked fine.
On a totally different topic, I’ve just been asked to provide a “company logo” for a conference.
Are there any graphic designers “out there” who’d like to produce a logo, either for this blog (Steve Keen’s Debtwatch) or the Centre for Economic Stability (provisional website still under development: http://www.centreforeconomicstability.org)?