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PODCAST

Debunking Economics - the podcast

Steve Keen & Phil Dobbie

Economist Steve Keen talks to Phil Dobbie about the failings of the neoclassical economics and how it reflects on society. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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All Episodes

44:05

Keir’s Thatcher love-in

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/12/13

Keir Starmer will be the UK’s next Prime Minister. Few things in life are more certain. So why did he see the need to write an opinion piece for the Telegraph extolling the virtues of Margaret Thatcher. He said she had freed up Britain’s entrepreneurial spirit. Really? She also created massive private debt, driven by a tax-incentivised housing bubble that together with market liberalisation, led to the growth of highly paid jobs in the finance sector in the south, whilst her industrial policy and

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48:39

Does Argentina need a central bank?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/12/06

In his election pledges President-Elect Javier Milei promised the people of Argentina two things. First, he would do dollarize the economy. He’d ditch the Peso and replace it with the, already widely used, UD dollar. Secondly, he would abandon the central bank, who he blames for the rampant inflation, which is one part of many fronts of destruction against the Argentinian economy. But can a country really do without a central bank, even if it is reliant on the currency of another country? This week

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40:46

Too many people?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/11/29

Last year net migration in the UK reached 745,000 people. A new record, which amount to more than 1% growth in the population. It’s an unsustainable population growth but Steve Keen argues growth on the planet as a whole is unsustainable. He worries that as climate change destroys food production migrants and UK locals alike will be queuing for relief flights to Rwanda. Climate aside, what is the impact of migration on the economy. It’s helping recipient economies by boosting GDP, often through

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40:01

The temerity of austerity

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/11/22

George Osbourne was the UK Chancellor wedded to austerity. “More cuts, more difficult decisions” he said at the start of 2014, as he struggled to get the British budget back into surplus. But regular listeners to this podcast know that a government budget in surplus is sucking money out of the economy. Steve Keen reminds us of the logic that shows austerity does nothing except cause damage. Phil talks through some of that damage, including cuts to public services, a shortage of UK life expectancy,

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46:57

Never too big to fail us

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/11/15

Last Wednesday Optus phone, mobile and internet users in Australia went without and sort of service for a full working day, starting from about 4 in the morning. At he same time, Thames Water in Surrey were slowly connecting back customers who had not had water supplies since the previous Saturday morning. Why are things we have always assumed we can rely on, suddenly starting to break? A spokesperson for Thames Water says the outage was because of a rare storm that only occurs every ten years. So

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45:51

AI – overhyped or capable of great things?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/11/08

Everyone is talking about AI right now. Rishi Sunak’s new best friend is Elon Musk, who has been over in Britain to talk about it and the danger it presents. ‘Civilization destruction’ is how he described it. But, whilst that might be a long-term concern, isn’t the short-term danger of more concern. Liker deep fakes. Or the rising use of energy by data centres and processing power. Or a reliance on an intelligence that just be plain wrong about things – there are some examples in the podcast. Even

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40:01

Does Andreessen need a dose of techno realism?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/11/01

Marc Andreessen is the brains behind the Mosaic web browser, that paved the way for the web interfaces that made the Internet useable. He’s, quite rightly, a billionaire. You could even say he has delivered a social surplus, in that we have all benefited from his invention to a value many more times than we was rewarded with personal income. Well done to him. But his belief that technology is unbounded is way off the mark. In a recent blog post – The Manifesto on Techno Optimism – he argues that

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45:01

Corporate Bullsh*t and what it’s doing to us

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/10/25

Entrepreneur Nick Hanauer says he is one of the richest 0.1% of people, but he’s a defender of the people. That’s why he’s exposed the lies we are fed in his latest book ‘Corporate bullshit - exposing the lies and half-truths that protect profit, power and wealth in America’. Once you realise it’s not about facts, it’s about power, it changes how you engage with the information fed from these companies. But, not only do these companies have power, they also have the influence that can convince

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42:54

Why are some countries poor?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/10/18

A simple challenge on the podcast this week – how do you fix world poverty? When he was President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim set a target of ending world poverty by 2030. In 2019 just 8.4 percent f the global population were living in extreme poverty. Sadly, the pandemic added another 70 million people live below the extreme poverty line, lifting it to 9.3 percent of the global population. World leaders seem more intent on fixing the short-term issue of illegal migration rather than fixing the

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40:50

Stand, but don’t deliver

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/10/11

Rishi Sunak is seemingly proud to have cancelled the only real nation building project Britain has had for decades.Instead, the money will be spent on sticking-plaster solutions to existing infrastructure, without any business case or overarching strategy. The reason? It all got too expensive. The other reason, Mr Sunak obviously thinks it’s a vote winner and he is well behind in the polls. This week Phil asks what’s happened to the £25 billion that has already been spent. The answer, of course, is

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44:13

Does human behaviour render all economic models useless?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/10/04

Economists like to believe human behaviour is predictable. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t have a job. Steve Keen argue that we do tend to behave like the rest of the herd, but how many herds are there? Phil asks if economists need to develop the sort of demographic segmentation modellers that marketers use? It’s certainly a long way from the basic assumption that we all act the same – as one representative agent, driven by fear and greed. But if we develop a more sophisticated approach,

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42:05

Liz Truss Deciphered

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/09/27

Liz Truss is back. She kept a fairly low profile after very short tenure as the UK Prime Minister, but popped up again for a speech at the Institute for Government, arguing that she was right about supply side economics and the need to fight against 25 years of economic consensus. She seems to think if everyone had read Milton Friedman the world would be a better place. There’s no surprise that Steve Keen disagrees with almost every point Truss made, but the law of averages suggests she must be

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47:38

Better the dollar you know?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/09/20

The US dollar is creating real problems right now. Speculators are buying it up as US Treasuries (bonds) offer higher yields at lower prices than other forms of sovereign debt. US shares are also proving popular as talk of a US soft landing intensifies, suggesting they’ll be more scope for company growth in the US than just about anywhere else. All of that is adding to the strength in the US dollar, which is weakening the value of other currencies. That means other countries pay more for importing

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42:16

A zero growth economy – how bad would it get?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/09/13

There’s a vain hope in investment circles, and amongst politicians, that we can still enjoy economic growth on the road to NetZero. There are those who believe that we can decouple our economic growth from our consumption of fossil fuels. In other words, we can continue to enjoy growth driven capitalism whilst avoiding the impacts of catastrophic climate change. Steve Keen is less convinced. He fits into the zero-growth camp, where the only way to reduce our impact on the planet is to stop

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42:01

Should we all earn less?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/09/06

Are we earning too much? Many of us are now spending less than we earn on day-to-day consumption items We’re putting our excess income into our future earnings, through our pension funds, who use a chunk of that the money to buy non-productive assets, liking investing in shares on the secondary market, to no-benefit of the companies we invest in. Phil talks to Steve about why we have this imbalance between earnings and spending when, at an aggregate level, our income should equal our productive

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44:09

Trump’s Ring Around the Collar

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/08/30

If he managed to stay out of gaol and makes it to the White House, Donald Trump has proposed a flat 10% tariff on all goods coming into America. He’s called it the Ring Around the Collar of America – which has led some to suggest the policy is a nasty stain that will be difficult to get out. But as phil Dobbie discovers, Trump has one supporter in the shape of Steve Keen. Steve talks from Hungary, where he is currently on assignment, suggesting this form of protectionism will be good for America

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44:59

How the finance sector is underestimating the risk on...

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/08/23

Recently Steve was commissioned to write a report for Carbon Tracker, an independent think tank offering in-depth analysis of the impact of climate change and energy transition on the finance industry. Inside “Loading the DICE Against Pensions” he looks at the reasons why pension funds have vastly underestimated the impact of climate change on investments. He talks through the issues with Phil, who asks, even if we know how bad the situation is, how will it change where we put our money?You can

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32:39

BRICs wouldn’t be silly enough to develop a...

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/08/16

There has been lots of speculation about BRICs countries working to develop a new trading currency, to enable trade without the reliance on the US dollar. There’s also talk that maybe this new currency will be backed by gold? Many suggest this will be a challenge to western fiat money. There’s a suggestion that such currencies will lose value against such a strong currency, backed by a physical commodity. This week Phil talks to Steve about this commodity obsession and why this idea wouldn’t work

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34:50

Did we experience a Pandemic-style People’s QE?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/08/09

QE was big news before the pandemic. Then, as governments issued bailouts to keep us at home, central banks went into overdrive, buying up the mushrooming bond issuance from government. In some ways, it was a sort of People’s QE, because the money was finding its way directly into people’s bank accounts. So, how does that compare to the QE before we all got ill? And is the pandemic-style QE at all responsible for the rise in inflation we’ve experienced since? Phil asks Steve if there are lessons to

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34:42

Who wins from high house prices. Other than banks?

Debunking Economics - the podcast ·

2023/08/02

Phil and Steve return to the well-worn path of talking about house prices. Why? Because, despite the downturn during the pandemic, followed by sharp rises in interest rates by central banks around the world, house prices are again edging up. Clearly, nothing can stop the march higher, even though an increasing proportion of the population simply can’t afford to enter the property market. So, we know who the losers are.Ut who is winning? And what can government policy do to build a more affordable

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