Top Economist Warns: Everyone Is Wrong About Deficits

Learn 50+ Years of Economics in Only 7 Weeks, by applying here: https://www.stevekeen.com

(Plus get Ravel — the economic visualization software we reference in this episode — as a bonus if you’re accepted and join.)

Top Economist Steve Keen sits down with Richard J. Murphy for an insightful conversation about why textbook economics so often fail in the real world and what to do instead. From the “theory of the second best” to the Cambridge Capital Controversies, from double-entry bookkeeping to sectoral balances, they unpack how bad assumptions create bad policy, and where Steve agrees with MMT on government money creation and where he pushes back on trade.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

✅ “Textbooks are teaching a lie”: how clean curves hide messy realities

✅ Why equilibrium thinking and perfect-competition myths mislead students and policymakers

✅ The second-best insight: removing one “distortion” can make outcomes worse

✅ Cambridge Capital Controversies and Samuelson’s quiet concession — and why it never reached textbooks

✅ Double-entry as first principles for money and macro, not supply–demand parables

✅ Where Steve aligns with MMT on deficits and money creation — and why he disputes “exports are a cost, imports a benefit”

✅ Climate economics under fire: why trivializing risk derails the response we need

✅ What Ravel brings to monetary and macro modeling (and what’s coming next)

Key insights:

• Start from accounting and definitions, not analogies.

• Sectoral balances are conservation laws: one sector’s surplus is another’s deficit.

• You can’t fix macro with micro parables; you need dynamic, accounting-consistent models.

• Honest economics welcomes critique — even of our own side — when the data and logic demand it.

What should Steve and Richard tackle next — deep dive on double-entry and Ravel, or a full episode on climate economics? Tell us below.

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Steve Keen — Website: https://stevekeen.com

Who are the guests?

Dr. Steve Keen is an economist known for accounting-consistent, dynamic models of money and debt, and the creator of the Minsky and Ravel tools. He challenges textbook myths with operational mechanics.

Prof. Richard Murphy, a political economist, author of the Funding the Future blog, and a long-time critic of the failed ideas driving our economy, known for clear explanations of how real-world accounts should shape economic debate.

Learn 50+ Years of Economics in Only 7 Weeks, by applying here: https://www.stevekeen.com

(Plus get Ravel — the software discussed in this podcast — as a bonus if you’re accepted and join.)

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