Debunking Economics - the podcast

By Steve Keen & Phil Dobbie

Economist Steve Keen talks to Phil Dobbie about the failings of the neoclassical economics and how it reflects on society.

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FAQs about Debunking Economics - the podcast:

How many episodes does Debunking Economics - the podcast have?

The podcast currently has 608 episodes available.

Debunking Economics - the podcast episodes:

February 08, 2023 Return of the Cluster Truss
Over the weekend Liz Truss was singing her own praises, with a front-page article in the UK’s Sunday Telegraph. She is known, of course, for being the UK’s shortest-term Prime Minister after her plans for tax cuts (mainly for the wealthy) sent finance markets into a spin. In particular, bond prices collapsed and saw pension funds running low on collateral, forcing the Bank of England to step in. But was she wrong? Former Chancellor George Osborne said she made the mistake of cutting taxes without cutting spending. Does that make her the poster child of MMT supporters? She’d be horrified at the description, no doubt. This week Phil and Steve talk about what was good (if anything) and bad about Liz Truss’ economic plan.

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38min
February 01, 2023 How does liquidity impact the economy?
For most of us liquidity is an easy concept to understand. Have we got enough cash to pay our bills? For small businesses it is a simple case of managing your cashflow and ensuring your cash on hand exceeds your current liabilities. For banks it’s a mix of ensuring you have the capital to meet demands from depositors, as well as the reserves to meet interbank transfers. To ensure we have liquidity we ensure there is a buffer, to keep us out of trouble. But does that buffer keep us using money productively. Even though Paul Krugman is Steve Keen’s Professor Moriarty, can his babysitting voucher analogy help us to understand the impact of low levels of liquidity on a functioning economy where productivity capacity isn’t being fully utilised.
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45min
January 25, 2023 An end to capitalism?
It would be a bold prediction to say that capitalism is on the way out. Nor should it be. It has provided growth and innovation for the global economy, but has it become too laissez faire? Phil asks Steve whether we need to return to the mixed-economy many of us grew up with – when governments controlled large essential sectors, such as transport and utilities, and imposed tighter regulations on those sectors open to private sector involvement. Are we seeing how unfettered capitalism creates more problems, even before we consider the impact it is having on the consumption of the planet’s resources?
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36min
January 18, 2023 Opportunity Cost and MMT
Conventional economics is built around the idea of opportunity cost. If there is a limited resource a decision has to be made about how best to use it. How is that principle applied when you look at Modern Monetary Theory, when governments can create money without limits until you have reached a point of full employment. There is no need to look at one choice over another. Perhaps you can do both? So, what determines how money is spent? Are those spending decisions left in the hands of politicians? Steve Keen says, to start with, the theory of opportunity cost should be ditched because it only applies at a personal level. He explains why that is, but agrees with Phil that politics is the big stumbling block when it comes to the practical application of MMT.
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41min
January 11, 2023 2023 and all that
After a disastrous couple of years, can things get any worse in 2023? Steve Keen and Phil Dobbie look ahead and actually find some positive take-outs from the precarious situation we find ourselves in. Inflation will fall, that’s taken as read. Politics will shift to the left, that’s already happening. But our future is still left in the hands of politicians who have no idea how to steer us to a more positive future.
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41min
January 02, 2023 Piero Sraffa and the non-existent supply curve
Most people think economics can be summarised in just two words – supply and demand. Where they cross that determines price and as they move the price moves. But what if the supply curve is wrong, or meaningless. One of the first economists to question that was Piero Sraffa, an Italian economist who had grave misgivings about the law of diminishing returns. Steve Keen talks through Sraffa’s life and theories on this week’s Debunking Economics podcast.
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41min
December 28, 2022 Joseph Schumpeter and creative destruction
This week, another economist that has influenced Steve Keen’s thinking; the Austrian born economist Joseph Schumpeter. His economic thinking veers a long way from the traditional Austrian school. As Steve explains this week, Schumpeter argued that if an economy was always moving to or from a point of equilibrium, then it follows that the profit of companies will always be zero. Only through innovation will those businesses get ahead, with means money invested in older technologies will no longer be rewarded. This was Schumpeter’s argument for Creative Destruction, an idea so basic you wonder why nobody had made the observation before him.
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35min
December 21, 2022 Bill Phillips & His Curve
Bill Phillips, rightly or wrongly, has a lot to answer for, because his work is drawn on by central banks when trying to determine the likely rate of inflation. But are they misinterpreting his theories? This week Steve Keen explains why there’s more to the Phillips curve than most people understand. There’s also a lot behind the man, from life on a farm in New Zealand, to engineering a radio in secret in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp. Listen in to hear the story of the man behind the infamous Phillips curve.
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31min
December 14, 2022 Richard Goodwin and non-linear thinking
We continue our series looking at economists who influenced Steve Keens thinking. This week it’s American economists Richard Goodwin, who Steve says is the chief proponent of non-linear thinking in economics. He wrote Theories of Surplus Value, which was about business cycles happening without any exogenous shocks, from overaccumulation and overproduction His biggest weakness was that he didn’t accept the role of banks in money creation, as he highlighted in a letter to Steve in the 1990s.
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41min
December 07, 2022 Irving Fisher and Debt Deflation
Irving Fisher was an American economist whose book The Purchasing Power of Money looked at the relationship between money supply and price levels. In fact, to many he is seen as the father of monetarism, but on this week’s podcast Steve Keen explains how Fisher’s struggles with debt led him to develop his thinking on debt deflation as the cause of major economic downturns. He’s the first of a series of economists who have influenced Steve’s thinking, that we’ll be looking at over the next five weeks or so.
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42min

FAQs about Debunking Economics - the podcast:

How many episodes does Debunking Economics - the podcast have?

The podcast currently has 608 episodes available.

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