Category Archives: Economies and economics

General discussions of economies and economics, non-technical.

StE gets big plug in Australian Fairfax press

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An article by Bob Douglas on the dire need for real political leadership prominently features Sack the Economists, along with a new book by prominent Australian economist Ross Garnaut, Dog Days: Australia After the Boom, the latter launched by prominent Liberal politician Malcolm Turnbull.  Tony Abbot deposed Turnbull as Leader of the Opposition in 2009, winning by one vote, otherwise Turnbull would probably now be Prime Minister.

See Bob Douglas’ article in the Sydney Morning Herald here.  It also appears in the Melbourne Age and the Canberra Times.

“Sack the Economists” on RWER blog

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An article on the Real World Economics Review blog:

Non-mainstream economists are all-too aware of the failure of mainstream economists to anticipate, let alone avoid, the Global Financial Crisis and the ensuing Great Recession.  The mainstream profession is also failing to fix the problem, and is actually making it worse.

It is hard to get alternative views heard, and the mainstream carries on almost totally unperturbed, despite being centrally responsible for a global disaster.  This is of course extremely frustrating.

After reading yet another cri de coeur from yet another frustrated economist, I thought perhaps we need to spell out the message in all bluntness

– continue reading

Sack the Economists? On Steve Keen’s Debtwatch

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Steve Keen has posted a guest post on his popular Debtwatch website.

Read­ers of this blog will have encoun­tered the idea that near-equilibrium neo­clas­si­cal eco­nomic the­ory is irrel­e­vant to dynamic, far-from-equilibrium, real mod­ern economies, and that the body of the­ory built around the neo­clas­si­cal assump­tions is full of incon­sis­ten­cies.  You will also be famil­iar with the idea that money and debt play cen­tral, dynamic roles in mod­ern economies.

Yet it can be argued there are other equally fun­da­men­tal flaws in the broader stream of the­ory and prac­tice that might be called main­stream eco­nom­ics.

– See more at: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2013/12/07/sack-the-economists/#sthash.oWYTzwRS.dpuf

Sack the Economists now available

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SackCoverMy ebook Sack the Economists and Disband their Departments is now available.

Mainstream economists completely failed to anticipate the financial market crash of 2007-8.  They then called it an unforeseeable event.  This is a clear admission that they don’t understand how economies work.  Yet many non-mainstream, marginalised economists gave clear warning of the approaching crash.  This book shows how mainstream economics has not one but many fundamental flaws.  It is not a science, it is pseudo-science.  It lacks scholarly rigour and integrity.  Once you understand this, it is not a mystery why the mainstreamers missed the approaching crash, nor why wealth is so unequally distributed, why we are so materialistic and unfulfilled, and why the planet is being destroyed.  But modern knowledge and systems ideas reveal market economies to be self-organising systems, and they can be managed to support dignified livelihoods in equitable societies that can survive into the indefinite future, with nature thriving along with them.

See more at the book’s web site, including how to purchase your copy.

Visit the Facebook page, like it and spread the word.

Sack the Economists

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… and disband their departments

The honourable Alan Greenspan testifies before...

The honourable Alan Greenspan testifies before the House Financial Services Committee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[My silence for some time here has been mainly because I was focussed on re-packaging my economic ideas in a form that might gain more traction.  So, there is a new book manuscript of the above title.  It will help to promote it (to publishers) if I have readers’ reactions.  Therefore, if you will undertake to give me feedback, I will supply you with the draft MS (120 pages, 2.2 Mb pdf).  You don’t have to be expert, it’s for a general audience and so I want feedback from that audience.  Most helpful to me will be comments on its readability and interest.  Of course any discussion of its arguments are also welcome.]

Here is the first part of the introductory chapter.  I will post more in a few days.

Chapter 1.  Economists Don’t Know What They’re Talking About

In 1994 Paul Ormerod published a book called The Death of Economics1.  He argued economists don’t know what they’re talking about.  In 2001 Steve Keen published a book called Debunking Economics: the naked emperor of the social sciences2, with a second edition in 2011 subtitled The naked emperor dethroned?3.  Keen also argued economists don’t know what they’re talking about.

Neither of these books, nor quite a few others, has had the desired effect.  Mainstream economics has sailed serenely on its way, declaiming, advising, berating, sternly lecturing, deciding, teaching, pontificating.  Meanwhile half of Europe and many regions and groups in the United States are in depression, and fascism is making a comeback.  The last big depression spawned Hitler.  This one is promoting Golden Dawn in Greece and similar extremist movements elsewhere.  In the anglophone world a fundamentalist right-wing ideology is enforcing an increasingly narrow political correctness centred on “free” markets and the right of the rich to do and say whatever they like.  “Freedom”, but only for some and without responsibility.

Evidently Ormerod and Keen were too subtle.  It’s true their books also get a bit technical at times, especially Keen’s, but then they were addressing the profession, trying to bring it to its senses, to reform it from the inside.  That seems to have been their other mistake.  They produced example after example of how mainstream ideas fail, but still they had no effect.  I think the message was addressed to the wrong audience, and was just too subtle.  Economics is naked and dead, but never mind the stink, just prop up the corpse and carry on.

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How Was Krugman So Wrong On Trade?

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[A good piece from one of my favourite sources, Campaign For America’s Future (formerly TomPaine.com).  Read the Greider piece too, it’s not very long.]

by Dave Johnson

Have our trade policies helped or hurt the country? You can look down at equations and models, or you can look up and see what is happening around you. Equations and models will tell you that “free trade” is a good thing. But if you look up and see what is happening around you … “not so much” is such an understatement. So a comparison of what economists predicted “free trade” would bring with what has actually happened might help us find a way out of the economic mess we are in.

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Finding a Framework for a New Economics – Expanded

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[I expanded the introduction to the original post and sent it to Real World Economics Review Blog, where it is now posted.]

The challenge, and reactions to it

Many economists, and more non-economists, agree that economics needs new ideas, given the comprehensive failure of the mainstream to foresee the Global Financial Crisis and its continuing failure to lift the US and Europe out of deep recession or depression.

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Finding a Framework for a New Economics

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[In preparing a pitch to some possibly supportive people, I realised I have not spelt out in brief form the argument that economies are complex self-organising systems.  There is a straightforward logic, it is not simply a preference pulled out of the air, or the depths of my psyche.]

Many economists, and more non-economists, agree that economics needs new ideas, given the comprehensive failure of the mainstream to foresee the Global Financial Crisis and its continuing failure to lift the US and Europe out of deep recession or depression.  Yet few seem to know where to start, and there seems to be little agreement on how much the subject needs to change.  When proposals appear that might begin to address fundamental problems, many economists seem to recoil, and others seem simply to fail to recognise that the proposals have any relevance.

Continue reading →