Talking About the Debtwatch Blog

Last month I gave a talk about the Debtwatch blog at Swinburne University of Technology, at the invitation of one of the blog’s most active members, Dr Matt Mitchell. The presentation mainly covers the history of how this blog came about, and gives economic background on the growth of debt in the USA (and Australia) over the last 6 decades, plus an overview of Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis.

Swinburne’s video of the talk is below, and it neatly melds my talk and the presentation I gave:

[podcast format=”video”]http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/talks/SteveKeenOnEducation.mov[/podcast]

The volume will appear too low when you hear Matt’s introduction, but this is because the audio level was set on my radio mic, which is much louder than the theatre microphone. Turn the sound up to hear Matt’s opening, but be ready to turn it down when I start talking.

I made an audio recording of the talk and the discussion as well. The audio quality in the video recording is quite good, but the audio recording is better for the discussion–at least when it comes to hearing what the questions and comments by audience members were.

[podcast]http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/talks/KeenBlogTalkSwinburneUniversity20100204.mp3[/podcast]

Matt’s doctorate is in education, and he was fascinated by Debtwatch as an example of the way in which the internet, and blogging in particular, has transformed people’s capacity to learn. I have also found it a fascinating experience, given that I started it simply as an easier way of distributing my monthly Debtwatch Reports. I had no expectation of it becoming as big as it is now, with almost 4,000 registered users, over 7,000 unique readers per day, and a stimulating and extremely civil discussion between about 100 active participants.

Given the last point in particular, it’s been a learning experience for me as well: many of the ideas that have been discussed on the blog will find their way into the book I am slowly writing on financial instability.

I also gave a quite detailed presentation on my analysis of the financial crisis, which I’ll post when I have time next week. This covers my models of the Financial Instability Hypothesis, and the endogenous creation of credit money.