The Future of Capitalism series
polity
Copyright © Steve Keen 2017
The right of Steve Keen to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2017 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1376-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Keen, Steve, author.
Title: Can we avoid another financial crisis? / Steve Keen.
Description: Malden, MA : Polity, 2017. | Series: The future of capitalism | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016044967| ISBN 9781509513727 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509513734 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Economic policy. | Political planning. | Debt. | Financial crises. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Economic Policy.
Classification: LCC HD87 .K434 2017 | DDC 338.5/42--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044967
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
My biggest intellectual debts are to the deceased non-mainstream economists Hyman Minsky, Richard Goodwin, Wynne Godley and John Blatt. I have also benefited from interactions with many academic colleagues – most notably Trond Andresen, Bob Ayres, Dirk Bezemer, Gael Giraud, David Graeber, Matheus Grasselli, Michael Hudson, Michael Kumhof, Marc Lavoie, Russell Standish and Devrim Yilmaz – and the philanthropist Richard Vague. Funding from the Institute for New Economic Thinking and from the public via Kickstarter has also been essential to my work.
This book could not have been written but for the work of the Bank of International Settlements in assembling comprehensive databases on private and government debt and house prices for the world economy.1 This continues a tradition of which the BIS can be proud: it was the only formal economic body to provide any warning of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 before it happened,2 thanks to the appreciation that its then Research Director Bill White had of Hyman Minsky’s ‘Financial Instability Hypothesis’ (Minsky, 1972, 1977), at a time when it was more fashionable in economics to ignore Minsky than to cite him.