Frontline is running a special on the financial crisis:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/
It should make interesting viewing. It will be available from 9pm New York time on February 17th–which I think means midday or thereabouts on the 20th, Sydney time.
I’m off to work with the CSIRO for a few days on modelling, and I may not be able to keep up with blog comments as well as I’d like to.
I’ve also had a correspondent who is prevented from posting to the blog by a too-strict Internet censoring policy in the country he’s currently in. I suggested that perhaps someone on the blog would be willing to “shadow” for him: i.e., sign on to the blog with an additional alias, and copy any emails from him as posts to the site.
The calendar widget that I’ve added the the site recently (see the left hand side bar below the login section) is great, but has an annoying bug: it gets the date right, but the day of the week wrong.
My guess is that this reflects if US origins, and the author has set it up on US time only. Since the USA is a day behind Australia, while the actual calendar is correct, all the days are shown as the day before in the text popups.
So today’s talks (on THURSDAY February 12th) are shown as taking place on Wednesday February 12th when you click on the date.
I’ve recently added a Calendar widget to the blog–just below the login widget on the left hand side.
I will use it to maintain a calendar of upcoming public events–and also conferences where I am speaking–as well as media coverage, if I get enough notice of it. The widget is very well designed–days coloured red to indicate an activity; hover over a highlighted day to see a summary; click on the date to get full details.
The first event there is a discussion about the crisis on the Sky News Program “On the Record”, at 8am this morning.
There’s an interesting post on the Atlantic by Jim Manzi, Stimulus predictions: put up or shut up, that calls on economists who are making predictions about what Obama’s stimulus package will or won’t do to present their models on which these predictions are based.
In part, he says:
It has been suggested to me that the number (and breadth) of discussions here has grown so much that this would be better served by establishing a discussion forum, as well as the blog.
Then discussions on given topics could be maintained on threads on the discussion site, while comments to the blog would be specifically on the topic of a given posting.
I am interested in how many others think this would be a good idea, and also of course in any drawbacks that people could anticipate.
Could we have a discussion here please, on this topic and none other?
Today Tonight’s James Thomas put together “Changing Times”, an excellent program on what a Depression is like, and the danger that we may be facing one today.
The centrepiece of the story was an interview with Eric Aarons, who at almost 90, lived through the Great Depression. His recollections frame an item that includes archival footage of the then Labor Party Prime Minister Scullin describing the turmoil of 1929 with the words “Australia is facing today the gravest financial crisis in its history”.
Plus ca change…
If you haven’t seen Changing Times yet, please do so.
So begins Anatole Kaletsky’s essay in The Times for February 5 2009. He is spot on. Economic theory played a direct role in this crisis, by legitimising the deregulation of finance and encouraging the profligate lending of financial institutions. There is much more that is wrong with the theory that dominates academic economics–known as “neoclassical economics”–enough to fill several books. My Debunking Economics : the naked emperor of the social sciences was one such book; in it I tried to explain all the technical flaws in economic theory to a non-mathematical audience.
The Today Tonight segment has been delayed till this evening (Wednesday February 4th)–which is a pity in a way because I will also be speaking at a public forum tonight at Circular Quay organised by the Property Knowledge Forum: An excerpt from the promotional flyer:
ARE WE HEADING FOR A DEPRESSION?
When will the bottom hit? Are we in store for 40% drops in property or has the recovery already begun?
Channel Seven’s Today Tonight is doing a piece on whether we might face a Depression, and if so what it might be like. It should go to air tomorrow–Tuesday February 3rd.
They have interviewed me for analysis, and Eric Aarons–who lived through the Great Depression and at 90 is still a dynamic sculptor and author.
They also want to speak to anyone who has lost their job recently–specifically if possible as a result of the global financial crisis.
So if anyone out there is willing to speak on camera about it, please contact the journalist James Thomas:
