Steve Keen's Debtwatch

The rev­e­la­tion in the min­utes of the RBA’s Feb­ru­ary meet­ing that debate focused, not on whether there should be a rise, but on whether it should be 0.25 or 0.5 per cent, shows that the RBA wagers that the threats to the Aus­tralian econ­o­my are upside ones–tighter labor mar­kets and high­er inflation–rather than down­side ones–a glob­al slow­down as asset mar­kets col­lapse dur­ing a cred­it crunch. The Feb­ru­ary min­utes implied that the RBA might real­ly throw its cards on the table at the March meet­ing, with a 0.5% rise being a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty.

On March 28, I’ll be launch­ing Eric Aaron’s lat­est book Mar­ket ver­sus Nature: The social phi­los­o­phy of Friedrich Hayek. The venue is:

Glee­books – 49 Glebe Point Road

Time: 6pm for drinks before a 6.30pm start; fin­ish by 8.30pm

Eric’s ear­li­er books include What’s Left–which is a mem­oir, an eval­u­a­tion of the fail­ure of com­mu­nism, and an attempt to dis­cern what remains of mer­it in social­ist thought after the col­lapse of com­mu­nism in the 1990s–and What’s Right–which blend­ed insights from polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, eco­nom­ics and biol­o­gy to put the case for a more eth­i­cal approach to the future of human­i­ty.

Stu­art Cameron’s new com­pa­ny Rife Media has start­ed a Debt­watch Pod­cast page:

Rife Medi­a’s Debt­watch Page

The Pod­cast will still be host­ed here as well, but it will prob­a­bly appear first on Rife Medi­a’s page as Stu does the pro­duc­tion.

Stu also pro­duced a Pod­cast from the Fabi­an Soci­ety sem­i­nar on “Eco­nom­ic Chal­lenges Fac­ing the Rudd Gov­ern­ment”, at which Saul Eslake, John Edwards and I spoke. All the speech­es, Geoff Gal­lop’s intro­duc­tion, and the Q&A ses­sion after­wards, are all cap­tured there with quite high sound qual­i­ty.

The Fabi­an Soci­ety has organ­ised a talk on the above top­ic for this Wednes­day at Glee­books:

When:       6.00 for 6.30pm, Wednes­day 20 Feb­ru­ary 2007.

Where:      Glee­books, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe.

Cost:         Non-Fabi­ans $10/$7. Mem­bers are free — please show your mem­ber­ship card to obtain free entry.

Con­tact:   Book­ings essen­tial – Glee­books web­site – Book online at http://www.gleebooks.com.au or on 9660 2333.

Media Queries:   Please con­tact Simon O’Hara, Sec­re­tary, NSW Fabi­ans -nsw@fabian.org.au

Note to Sub­scribers: I have been on study leave in Europe for the last month, and get back to Syd­ney late on Mon­day Feb­ru­ary 4th. I will be avail­able for com­ment from the morn­ing of Tues­day Feb­ru­ary 5th.

Chart of the Month: Who’s hav­ing a hous­ing bub­ble then?

A SMH arti­cle claimed that 17 out of 19 econ­o­mists sur­veyed expect­ed the RBA to increase rates in response to the Jan­u­ary CPI fig­ure:

Dol­lar inch­es towards US90 cents on rates expec­ta­tion

I’m cur­rent­ly in Nor­way, and was invit­ed to talk on the glob­al debt cri­sis to a local dis­cus­sion group. They video­taped the talk, and put it up on Google Video. The link is:

 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1375113008927627575

There is also a copy on my site–with the open­ing triv­ia about how I met my Nor­we­gian host and fel­low researcher Trond Andresen delet­ed:

http://www.debtdeflation.com/podcast/SteveKeenDebtTalkNorway20080131.mov

I give an overview of the debt sit­u­a­tion, using the graphs that I cus­tom­ar­i­ly put into the Debt­watch Report, as well as explain­ing Hyman Min­sky’s “Finan­cial Insta­bil­i­ty Hypoth­e­sis”, which I regard as the only eco­nom­ic the­o­ry that can explain the cur­rent state of finan­cial mar­kets and the glob­al econ­o­my.

I’ve been research­ing in Europe and too busy to main­tain the blog for a while, for which I apol­o­gise. Hope­ful­ly I’ll get back to it when I return to Syd­ney next week. In the mean­time, I had the fol­low­ing Soros arti­cle rec­om­mend­ed to me, and it’s an excel­lent com­men­tary on the cred­it cri­sis:

Soros on “The worst mar­ket cri­sis in 60 years”