Steve Keen — The Crisis in 1000 words—or less

The Union for Radical Political Economics–is holding a Summer School for the Occupy movement, and as part of that invited papers that explained the crisis in 1000 words or less (so that they can be printed on one double-sided sheet). Here’s my effort in somewhat less than 1,000 words (though with 2 figures). In the interests of URPE’s objective in this exercise, here’s the PDF of this blog post for general download.

Read it at Steve Keen's Debtwatch
The Crisis in 1000 words—or less
By Steve Keen

SK: "I have therefore proposed that a “Modern Debt Jubilee” should take the form of “Quantitative Easing for the Public”: monetary injections by the Federal Reserve not into the reserve accounts of banks, but into the bank accounts of the public—but on condition that its first function must be to pay debts down."

My understanding of present US law is that this would require Congressional approval in the US. The Fed cannot just credit private bank accounts. That's fiscal and it is reserved to Congress. So Congress would have to delegate direct issuance without increasing the national debt into the economy by the Fed. Not gonna happen in the US.