Tag Archives: Debtwatch

Though Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank con­tributed to its own demise, the root cause of this cri­sis is the fact that pri­vate banks own gov­ern­ment bonds. If they did­n’t, then SVB would still be sol­vent. Its bank­rupt­cy was the result of the price of Trea­sury bonds falling, because The Fed­er­al Reserve increased inter­est rates. As inter­est rates rise, the val­ue of Trea­sury Bonds falls. With the resale val­ue of its bonds plung­ing, the total val­ue of SVB’s assets (which were...

I was asked to con­tribute to an Ital­ian online pub­li­ca­tion’s trib­ute to John Ken­neth Gal­braith, by answer­ing some ques­tions about the rel­e­vance of his major work The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) six decades lat­er. These were my respons­es. Read­ing The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) again, six decades after it was first pub­lished, high­light­ed for me just how far eco­nom­ic the­o­ry has retreat­ed from real­i­ty since...

I was asked to con­tribute to an Ital­ian online pub­li­ca­tion’s trib­ute to John Ken­neth Gal­braith, by answer­ing some ques­tions about the rel­e­vance of his major work The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) six decades lat­er. These were my respons­es. Read­ing The New Indus­tri­al State (Gal­braith and Gal­braith 1967) again, six decades after it was first pub­lished, high­light­ed for me just how far eco­nom­ic the­o­ry has retreat­ed from real­i­ty since...

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I main­tain this site for his­tor­i­cal rea­sons only. If you’re look­ing for my lat­est work, please go to https://www.patreon.com/profstevekeen.

I dis­cuss a Mod­ern Debt Jubilee On Macro’n’Cheese today, and this is a quick expla­na­tion of how it could be done. Jubilees were com­mon in antiq­ui­ty. The Lord’s Prayer did not orig­i­nal­ly say “And for­give us our sins, as we have for­giv­en those who sin against us”, but “And for­give us our debts, as we also have for­giv­en our debtors”. But an old-fash­ioned Jubilee would reward those who gam­bled with bor­rowed mon­ey, and thus effec­tive­ly penalise those who did not. It...

Dr. Keen, I am won­der­ing if you have ever seri­ously con­sid­ered issuance of Gisel­lian cur­rency for coun­tries fac­ing unplayable debt (all of them, as far as I know). The scheme I am imag­in­ing would have these govts pay­ing off bonds due with G-cur­rency. Bond­hold­ers would then, ASAP, spend it on real items in the econ­omy, where it would even­tu­ally end up as wages, where work­ers would spend it, ASAP, on taxes and con­sumer goods. The demur­rage, say 12%/year (= 12 x...

I have recently estab­lished a Patreon site https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen, where peo­ple can sup­port my research and advo­cacy work with dona­tions start­ing at $1/month. That is now where I will engage in con­ver­sa­tion in response to posts. So if any­one here wants to con­tinue a dia­logue with me and oth­ers, please sign up there. This site was flooded by a large num­ber of spam users at the same time as I became unable to main­tain my own role in dis­cus­sions here,...

I’m tak­ing part in a debate on one of the major top­ics in this year’s elec­tion, Brexit, on May 31st at 7.30pm at Can­ham, 40 Sheen Lane, Lon­don SW14 8LW. The other speak­ers are Frances Cop­pola, and Angus Arm­strong. Frances Cop­pola is an eco­nomic com­men­ta­tor in print and fre­quently on the BBC. Angus Arm­strong is direc­tor of macro-eco­nom­ics at one of the top research insti­tu­tions, the National Insti­tute of Eco­nomic and Social Research founded in 1938. Click...

I’m freez­ing this site and mov­ing to both Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen) and a new web­site http://www.profstevekeen.com/. There are sev­eral rea­sons: This site’s signup secu­rity failed, and some­thing like 50,000 bot-users have signed up. It’s just too cum­ber­some in Word­Press to delete them selec­tively from here, so it’s eas­ier to move to a new, clean site; I used to be very active in dis­cus­sions here, but the demands on my time became so exces­sive...