Credit Writedowns

Professor Steve Keen was on Tonight with Vincent Browne in Ireland last week, where the topic understandably was the European Union. The question for Steve was how the Maastricht Treaty fits his economic paradigm, which follows Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis. Below is a 10-minute clip from the show.

Steve Keen’s talk at INET is now up on the web (hat tip BT). His talk is billed as a primer on Hyman Minsky. In it, Steve argues that one cannot model Minsky using a New Keynesian or traditional neoclassical approach because of the reliance of these modelling approaches on the economic equilibrium assumption. Keen sees this assumption as the major flaw that cannot be remedied using standard modelling approaches.

I think this video is worth watching because Keen gets to the heart of the issues with the standard approach to economics. He says that banks, money and debt are front and center in reality as we now see after the crisis. Consequently, they should also be integral in economic models

The debate between Paul Krugman and my friend Steve Keen regarding how banks work (see here, here, here, and here) has caused me to revisit an old quote. Back in the 1990s I would use Krugman’s book, Peddling Prosperity (1995), in my intermediate macroeconomics courses since it provides a good overview of what were then contemporary debates in macroeconomic theory as well as Krugman’s criticisms of various popular views on macroeconomic policy issues from that era. One passage near the very end of the book has always remained in the back of my mind; in it, Krugman critiques a popular view that was and still is highly influential regarding productivity and trade policy. He writes: “So, if you hear someone say something along the lines of ‘America needs higher productivity so that it can compete in today’s global economy,’ never mind who he is or how plausible he sounds. He might as well be wearing a flashing neon sign that reads: ‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.’” (p. 280; emphasis in original)

In his latest post in this debate (which Keen replied to here), Krugman demonstrates that he has a very good grasp of banking as it is presented in a traditional money and banking textbook. Unfortunately for him, though, there’s virtually nothing in that description of banking that is actually correct. Instead of a persuasive defense of his own views on banking, his post is in essence his own flashing neon sign where he provides undisputable evidence that “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

My friend Steve Keen recently presented a “primer” on Hyman Minsky. In his piece, Steve criticized the methodology used by Paul Krugman and argued that Krugman could learn a lot from Minsky. In particular Krugman’s equilibrium approach and primitive dynamics was contrasted to Minsky’s rich analysis. Finally, Krugman’s model of debt deflation dynamics left out banks–while banks always played an important role in Minsky’s approach. This post is to help explain why Hyman Minsky matters by quickly summarizing Minsky’s main areas of research. Next week I will post up more on Minsky’s view of “money and banking”.

Good video with Steve Keen, the Australian economics professor with Max Keiser. Steve not only talks about the Australian economy and that country’s housing bubble but also about the bursting of housing bubbles in Canada, the UK and Hong Kong.

Clearly, economic policy is now far more complex than it appeared to be before the GFC. As we enter this Age of Deleveraging, the worst thing we can do is apply policies that appeared to work during the preceding Age of Leverage—but were in fact predicated on ever-rising private sector indebtedness. Politicians should be sceptical of conventional economic advice at this time; it would be much wiser to study the history of the 1930s instead.

This time it’s Steve Keen on the hotseat on HARDtalk. Now, Steve is one of the few economists who actually predicted the global financial crisis. But what about the possibility of another Great Depression? That possibility and how to avoid it were the topics of conversation in this 25-minute interview. Great stuff.

Europe has an enormous productive capacity, Greece included. Debt introduces a money distribution problem that becomes a flashpoint during periods of economic weakness because the inability of large debtors to pay imperils both the debtor, the creditor and everyone whose income is derived from those sources. If the debtors are large enough as in the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone, you get a systemic crisis that often leads to depression.

The European sovereign debt crisis is all about apportioning losses between debtors, creditors, and taxpayers from debts that simply cannot be repaid in real terms.

Australian Professor Steve Keen explains why private sector debt dynamics drove both the Great Depression and the Great Recession.

Hat tip Rolfe Winkler.

Janet Tavakoli was a recent guest on “On the Edge with Max Keiser” and had some troubling things to say about the state of the present U.S. financial system.  She believes the liquidity pumped into the system will not be sufficient to reflate the economy because of over-leveraged U.S. households. The real burden of debt is already increasing as nominal [...]