BBC Interviews on QE Today
Sep14
on September 14, 2012
at 10:03 am
I’m being interviewed about the Federal Reserve’s QE3 announcement today on BBC Radio:
6.15AM GMT on BBC Radio 4 BBC Business Daily LIVE
8.32AM GMT on BBC World Service
If you’re not in the UK, you can listen online:
Steve,
Do you respond somewhere to the criticisms of the 1st edition of “Debunking Economics” by Christopher Auld in his 2002 paper “Debunking Debunking Economics?”
Thanks,
Tom
(Also criticisms by Matt Nolan and Paul Walker)
Yes Tom. In fact a very recent blog post was on this topic:
http://debunkingeconomics.com/2012/09/waving-goodbye-to-the-invisible-hand/
You will also find a complete statement of my analysis in this online accessible paper:
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue53/KeenStandish53.pdf
As I note in the blog post, Auld attacks my criticism of Marshall by defending Cournot. That’s a bit like attacking a criticism of modern art by praising Leonardo da Vinci. I was never arguing that the Cournot model was wrong: instead I was arguing that the Marshallian model was wrong, and that it should not be taught. As a consequence of Auld’s attack (and others like it) Russell and I actually extended our critique to the issue of the stability of the Cournot-Nash equilibrium as well, and showed that it was locally unstable.
Whoops–getting my blogs mixed up. That article will appear on Business Spectator next week, and be linked to from here.
This is interesting from Nolan, any thoughts? btw, I think when the debate gets emotional and personal it also becomes irrational…
“Fisher wasn’t wrong – but he was discussing an economy under the gold standard … so it was an entirely different monetary regime that meant that in the face of this large non-monetary shock, the system created deflation. Sure enough, we don’t have that sort of system now – and we haven’t seen the mass deflation that we did during the Great Depression. The monetary regime now is a lot better, and outside of the ECB the lender of last resort function is widely accepted”
Well, I’d see the GD as a large endogenous monetary “shock” to begin with, and the gold standard had a role, but was not the causa causans. The LOLR and similar policies now are part of why the deflation didn’t persist this time, but so too is the distribution of debt: 125% debt/gdp ratio for the corporate sector back then versus 70% now.
Anyone who missed the 14th Sept 2012 interviews can still hear them for the next few days. Here is a link to Steve’s Business Daily interview. According to the BBC World Service website it will be valid until 20th Sept 2012
The Today program on Radio 4 for 14th Sept will eventually show up in the archive but not until the 15th. Steve’s contribution starts about 15 minutes in.
Regards this cnbc video:
http://t.co/u4fYkU4y
It is amazing how ignorantly blinded of policy alternatives and possibilities economic “authorities” are. And it’s all because of worn out orthodoxy. Our current monetary controls aren’t controls at all. All you’d need to ACTUALLY have adult and wisely controlled monetary policy is institute a compensated retail discount BASED SOLELY ON THE FACTS OF THE COST OF CONSUMPTION OVER THE COST OF PRODUCTION that eliminated inflation for consumers and kept retailers whole on their profits, and you actually could give individuals $50-100k without doing anything but good. Wisdom, it eludes the stupid, and is not preferred by the monetary monopolists….but it IS the answer.
I wonder if Faber’s $10,000,000 suggestion wasn’t more a way to invalidate the idea of a jubilee than to actually encourage it. Regardless, as the stupids on CNBC quickly chimed in about inflation/ we must not violate “free” market theory, blah, blah, blah….it shows how widespread idiot orthodoxy actually is.
Per http://t.co/0tBji2o8
OWS got too sucked into the left/right framing that Finance wants everyone to be hypnotized by. That is a false duality. The real enemy is finance, and the real prob;em is debt/credit/money. The only way to defeat the power of money….is with money. The problem with money is its monopolization by private banks and their lap dog governments. The best way to break up that monopoly is with a economically and politically firewalled off institution whose sole function is the accurate gathering of economic statistics so as to distribute and actually control a supplemental income TO INDIVIDUALS, a Social Credit distributing institution, if you would. The freeing of individuals from the monopolization of credit with this POLICY of economic GRACE is a part of the synthesis of economic and monetary policy with the condensation of human spirituality contained in the ideas, values and experiences of Faith as in Confidence, Hope, Love and Grace.
Finance may be able to manipulate and control politics, economics, sociology etc. etc. forever, but Wisdom, a higher order of thinking and experiencing, has the power to transform and overcome it.