The economics of babysitting
One analogy that economists like to use is that of the Capitol Hill Babysitting cooperative in Washington DC in the 1970s. Government workers set-up a babysitting group, where they to it in turns to b...
20 Mar 202431min
Hunt’s Budget Fantasyland
The UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered what is almost certainly his last budget, promising the usual stuff – more investment, more jobs, better public services and lower taxes. And, miraculously, all...
13 Mar 202444min
Selling bonds to punters shrinks the economy
The UK Debt Office has started selling bonds to retail investors through the primary market Previously the only way you could buy government bonds was through financial institutions, through ETFs, for...
6 Mar 202440min
Steve Keen, the Musketeer
Elon Musk has his fingers in many pies. Social media, space travel, internet access, AI. Even tunnel drilling. He’s grown from developing a modest series of online city guides, to being one of the ric...
28 Feb 202441min
Challenging American Exceptionalism
The concept of American Exceptionalism has been talked about for decades, mainly by Americans. Now the term is back in vogue because the US has shown the fastest recovery from the pandemic and subsequ...
21 Feb 202439min
Economic growth without more money?
Rishi Sunak, like most politicians, is adamant that he can grow the economy by getting businesses to be more productive. But can businesses really grow the economy by themselves, if the government jus...
14 Feb 202444min
Banking on destruction
Have central banks waited too long before dropping interest rates. Over the last week or so we’ve had Jerome Powell, the Governor of the Fed, saying inflation is coming down but they want to see more ...
7 Feb 202436min
Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism
Yanis Varoufakis joins Steve nd Phil this week to talk about the thinking behind his new book technofeudalism. The ‘cloudists, as he calls them, aren’t operating in the market, they have replaced the ...
31 Jan 202454min
