Sunday, April 15, 2012

INET Berlin Videos, Days 1 - 3


Day 1

Leverage recommends the presentation by cognitive scientist Antonio Damasio, whose work I have often cited here.
Leverage:  Peter Victor: Managing the Global Commons 1/5; apparently this guys are building a model which integrates, both real economy, financial and environment. For the financial part they are using Wynne Godley & Mark Lavoie so functional finance and should be close enough to MMT (I would like them getting ideas from Keen on banking & credit, some collaboration would be awesome).
Day 2

I would especially recommend the presentations of Axel Leijonhufvud and, of course, Michael Hudson.

Day 3

Here I would especially recommend the presentation of Amartya Sen

I didn't mention the videos here that I have already posted individually.

9 comments:

Jonf said...

Everyone should read Michael Hudson's paper. It is critical to our time. I can only hope it will lead to some actions to reverse these terrible trends.

Jonf said...

A working family would immediately know what Michael means by the NUT. Too bad our nobles do not.

Matt Franko said...

This from Hudson's paper:

"This dynamic of credit expanding to divert the economic surplus away from public and
private investment or rising living standards has occurred often in history, most notoriously in
the way in which the Roman Republic and Empire collapsed. Yet it does not appear in economic
models. That is part of the problem: The narrow assumptions made by these models distract
attention from the corrosive financial and other rentier dynamics that occur in the real world."

"Divert the economic surplus": I cannot see what he is talking about here wrt 'economic surplus'.

What is 'economic surplus'? Trying to understand... Hudson may be on to something...

Resp,

Tom Hickey said...

You could think of the "surplus" in terms of discretionary income. Hudson's point is that the objective of financial sector rent-seeking is to take as much discretionary as it can and convert it to maintenance by increasing the monthly nut with loan service. He contends that everything that is not taxed is fair game for them.

Matt Franko said...

Tom,

Can you help me with an analogy...

Let's say it's a 3 sector set-up:

1. Sewer Authority that has been given authority to charge a 'toll' on water use; toll not paid, they have rights to foreclose on the homeowner.

2. Monetary Authority, which includes their 'partners', the banks.

3. Homeowner person with water meter on their home whereby to repeat if they do not pay the water bill, the Sewer Authority can foreclose on the home and throw them out on the street.

Monetary Authority is running a 'balanced budget', ie taxing out what they are spending in. Those in the Sewer Authority sector are using their authority to deliver a result to those within their sector whereby they are net saving Financial Assets.

Can all the Homeowner Persons flush the toilet without some of them getting a loan from a bank? Otherwise they risk losing the home to foreclosure as the Sewer authority can force a foreclosure for an unpaid water and sewer bill..

????

Resp,

Clonal said...

I thought John Kay's talk was excellent. Not related to MMT, but very relevant to bank fraud and Ponzi schemes

Tom Hickey said...

@Matt

That's what happens when private debt becomes unsustainable. Apparently the bankmeisters don't figure this in. For example, Alan Greenspan didn't think that they would kill the goose that lays the golden egg, but they did. They counted on their being bailed out if this ever happened.

Anonymous said...

This is the financial sector:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3pdDKCIV7Y

Anonymous said...

Alan Greenspan is a deranged individual. In the 'house of cards' documentary by CNBC he basically says there's nothing the Fed could have done. Then he goes on to say that this is basically just how the market works, the market knows best, and it will happen again - but there's nothing anyone can do or should do about it because regulation doesn't work. He's a sick man.