Late last year on SBS News, when Stan Grant asked me which way the RBA would move rates in 2008, I replied “Up, and then down”, Stan quipped “Spoken like a true economist–an even handed answer!”–to which I replied “More down than up”.
I expected the intial rate rises because of the RBA’s focus on the [...]

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Last month closed with some far from comforting news about the state of the US housing market (sales and prices still falling), US financial institutions (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in need of rescue), Australian banks (NAB’s 90% write-down of its US CDO portfolio). Then ABS figures showed that retail sales had fallen “unexpectedly” by [...]

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I recently made a submission to the Senate Economics Committee on the RBA (Enhanced Independence) Bill, where I argued against the Bill–as did all four public submissions.
After making that submission (which I’ll post here shortly) I thought I’d check out my submission to the Wallis Committee–since I argued that the RBA and the regulatory authorities [...]

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Steve Keen’s DebtWatch No 22 May 2008
The Reserve Bank Amendment (Enhanced Independence) Bill 2008, which was tabled in Parliament in March, aims to give the RBA Governor and Deputy Governor “the same level of statutory independence as the Commissioner of Taxation and the Australian Statistician” (Wayne Swann, Hansard, Thursday, 20 March 2008, p. 2381).
Under the [...]

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Tables like the ones below take my breath away when I see them for the first time–because the story they tell is worse than any I would have dared make up. As I noted in the interview with Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report, real wages have increased since 1990, and since Australia’s last election [...]

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Both parties will make much of their economic management credentials in this election campaign.
Many Australians, on the other hand, seem convinced that the economy would do as well regardless of which party were in power.
The average punter has it right: luck, rather than skill, has determined which governments in retrospect came up smelling like roses [...]

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Dear All,
Below is the press release from the Centre for Policy Development for the launch of my “mini-book” on debt. Please pass the news on, and I hope to meet some of you at the launch.
You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt”
(Merle Travis, 1946)
Australia has been on a 45 year [...]

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I expect–and hope–that the tenor of discussion at this month’s RBA Board meeting will be very different to last month’s. In August, I imagine, the community members of the Board listened sagely as the RBA’s economists explained why the risk of future inflation had risen, why this justified a “pre-emptive strike” of raising interest rates, [...]

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The 7.30 Report is making good use of the web with its extended interview feature. These are the edited highlights of the major interviews it does for stories, at best ten per cent of which sees the light of day in the final story.
Here is the link to the extended interview with me for their [...]

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Those of you who missed last night’s 7.30 Report (like myself–I was playing tennis at the time!) should check the link below:
 American mortgage shock waves hit Australia
Apologies again for a tardy update cycle on this blog, but as you can imagine, I’m busy as hell right now. When the dust settles–in early October–I hope to [...]

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