Lord Robert Skidelsky - Keynes in the Crisis of Neoliberalism

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, policymakers were having trouble finding the correct measures to pull the world economy out of the slump. Quantitative easing? Fiscal austerity? Neither seem to have fully achieved their anticipated outcomes. Is this due to flaws in today’s prevailing economic thinking? On Thursday 13th of April, Room for Discussion has the honour of discussing this question with special guest Lord Robert Skidelsky.
Mr. Skidelsky is an economic historian, famous for his award-winning biography of John Maynard Keynes, and other publications such as "Keynes: The Return of The Master".
During the interview, we will investigate the flaws of current economic policies and the causes of the neoliberal crisis, by exploring economic history and different schools of thought. Further, we will discuss the relevance of Keynesian economic theory today. Last but not least, we will apply Keynsean logics to the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. How should we have responded according to Keynes? Were austerity politics the wrong response to the crisis? Is the mainstream economics we are taught today the best way forward?
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[@301stface3]

What a wonderful talk. After an hour of hearing to Mr. Skidelsky I learnt to appreciate real economist.

[@SebastiaanHolStadsgids]

This vid. needs more viewers and thumbs up!

[@monizdm]

The problems with Rational Expectations are twofold: 1) that risk can be calculated; 2) that market participants want them calculated properly. Having been smack in the middle of this mess that led to 2008/9, I can tell you that there was no shortage of wishful thinking.

[@MegaLotusEater]

Great talk. Thanks for uploading.
Its sad how people giggle at the mere reference of Marx. He, and all the Marxists who have come after, theorise the structural workings of capitalism, its crisis ridden nature, and the structures of power contained therein, in a way that no other economist or political economist does. Marx really is crucial reading, not least for the current period of crisis

[@Freskavena1]

Great job guys.

[@konservativ_ork408]

I’m reading Lord Robert’s biography on John Keynes now and looking through his other work as well. England has debased itself to admit an ethnic Russian of Chinese origins to sit in the House of Lords.

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

MARC STEINER: So where does the money come from, then, to invest in infrastructure, in new businesses, and whatever else has to be invested in?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, banks don’t invest. That’s a myth. The pretense is that rescuing the banks rescued the economy. But the banks don’t make loans to the economy. Banks don’t make loans to fund factories. They don’t make loans for infrastructure. They make loans to buy assets already in place. They’re privatizing the structure to take it private, raise the rates the people have to pay for services.
Essentially they lend to raiders taking over corporations. They won’t help a corporation put in more equipment and hire more people, but they’ll lend to a raider to break up a corporation, downsize the labor force, smash it up and leave it a bankrupt shell. That’s the financial management plan. That’s what they teach in business schools.
So the financial management philosophy that we have is diametrically opposed to what’s needed for economic growth. That should be what people are talking about, because more and more economists are warning that given the rising debt ratios, there’s going to be another crisis. What we should be talking about when we look back on the anniversary of Lehman’s bankruptcy is how to handle the next crisis in a way that doesn’t bail out banks, that bails out the economy by writing down the debts.
If banks have bad debts, they’ve made bad loans. Banks used to be conservative and prudent. But if they make imprudent loans and they say, we don’t care the borrower can’t pay because we’ve sold the whole loan off to a pension fund or a German Landesbank, and somebody else is going to take the loss, you have to restructure the banking system and the financial management, and take it out of the hands of bankers to manage.
If you leave the Treasury Department and the Justice Department and the bank regulators in the hands of bankers, they’re going to loot the rest of the economy. They’re going to take everything they can. So you want someone who’s not a banker to actually do the regulation.
th-cam.com/video/V17t8bJDcw0/w-d-xo.html

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

"These bankers (and bondholders) are the main exploiters today. So finance capitalism is overwhelming industrial capitalism. Instead of industrial capitalism evolving into socialism as was expected, it is retrogressing back to neo-serfdom and neo-feudalism.
This is mainly because of the inability to bring debt within the industrial capitalist system to evolve into a socialist economy. That is what neoliberalism is sponsoring by financialization and privatization: the inability to make debt productive."
thenextsystem.org/what-is-junk-economics?fbclid=IwAR3cYBG6_F3SpAOpZCvaq4_1qiRFbQuUxi3zDqyV68r5KPM5ZGcwFRU0OV0

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

Fed Ups Its Wall Street Bailout to $690 Billion a Week as Media Snoozes
wallstreetonparade.com/2019/10/fed-ups-its-wall-street-bailout-to-690-billion-a-week-as-media-snoozes/

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

40 minutes in and he still hasn't mentioned FDR's fiscal stimulus that paved the way for US prosperity of the 50's and 60's! FISCAL POLICY lies at the dead center of the democratic government. - E. Pendleton Herring, 1938

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

Today's economics students and graduates have been done a terrible disservice by not learning the truth about economics. They are not taught pluralism, economic history, nor do they discuss money, debt or banks!
“...If you look at mainstream economics there are three things you will not find in a mainstream economic model - Banks, Debt, and Money.
How anybody can think they can analyze capital while leaving out Banks, Debt and Money is a bit to me like an ornithologist trying to work out how a bird flies whilst ignoring that the bird has wings...”
― Steve Keen
“Economics students are forced to spend so much time with this complex calculus so that they can go to work on Wall St. that there’s no room in the course curriculum for the history of economic thought. So all they know about Adam Smith is what they hear on CNN news or other mass media that are a travesty of what these people really said and if you don’t read the history of economic thought, you’d think there’s only one way of looking at the world and that’s the way the mass media promote things and it’s a propagandistic, Orwellian way.
The whole economic vocabulary is to cover up what’s really happening and to make people think that the economy is getting richer while the reality is they’re getting poorer and only the top is getting richer and they can only get rich as long as the middle class and the working class don’t realize the scam that’s being pulled off on them.”
~ Michael Hudson

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

Lord Skidelsky needs to learn MMT, since he STILL believes in trickle down! (49:00). th-cam.com/video/CLBNZfvRrRY/w-d-xo.html

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

Steve Keen on the crisis of PRIVATE debt today that the orthodoxy ignores:
th-cam.com/video/a26knrKqGy4/w-d-xo.html

[@0zoneTherapyW0rks]

He's beats around the bush too much, though he's on the right track. The problem isn't overconsumption, it's poor resources choices that corporations make. Fossil fuels, natural gas (fracking), lithium (Bolivia), 5G "smart" grid only continue wars and destroy the environment. We must use what is in abundance and is easily renewable... solar, water, wind, hemp and biodegradable materials.