The early days of Bitcoin its proponents argued that this could be the global currency to replace fiat money. Governments the world over were issuing too much currency, leading to inflation, whilst imposing arbitrary regulations that would be impossible once authorities lost control of money. Steve says for that to work Bitcoin would need to be capable of the instantaneous transactions we are used to with the billions of banking transactions that happen every day. What’s more, the limited supply...
Dec 03, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 484
How far are we willing to go in accepting the corporate takeover of just about everything. In Britain public utilities were sold off, so companies could profit from selling resources whilst minimising maintenance of facilities. Phil asks the question how Britain’s water infrastructure is in such a state of repair in an industry that makes £13 billion per year. Then there’s the moves to strangle publicly funded media and privatise the funding of health. But it gets worse. Britain’s freeports are ...
Nov 26, 2025•48 min•Season 1Ep. 483
Several listeners have written in to get Steve’s views on the path being taken by Mark Carney to rescue the Canadian economy. Initially it looked like the country was rebounding strongly from the pandemic, but in the last couple of years the growth has slowed and then declined. That was before President Trump hit them hard with tariffs and then said he’d like them to become part of the US. In some ways he is trying the same approach as the UK – to balance the operational side of government spend...
Nov 19, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 482
This week Phil and Steve look at cost-plus inflation, driven by rising wages. Right now its being given as the reason that services inflation is remaining sticky and that’s why many central banks are reluctant to reduce interest rates. Steve says it’s a far more sensible assumption than the neoclassical belief, promulgated by Milton Friedman, that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It's not just workers who can put prices up, of course. Companies can increase their margins...
Nov 12, 2025•45 min•Season 1Ep. 481
Is it fair enough to totally write off Ricardo’s theory of competitive advantage? Certainly, President Trump isn’t an advocate, using tariffs to protect America’s domestic industries from those countries that produce stuff cheaper. A broad economy, producing a range of products and services, is preferably to a narrow one, reliant on one or two key exports, which is what Ricardo advocated. But in support of Ricardo, some of the narrowest economies, like Australia, have some of the highest levels ...
Nov 06, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 480
The UK Labour party has struggled to forge a recovery for the beleaguered economy. Rachel Reeves is intent on reducing the government deficit. Her first attempt involved increasing the National Insurance contributions made by businesses – in effect, raising a payrolls tax. In short, a reason for companies unsure about recruiting in a slow growth economy to err on the side of caution. Now, there’s talk of tax rises. Steve and phil talk about the impact on growth of added more to the consumer’s ta...
Oct 29, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 479
Before he was the UK Prime Minister at war with the Nazis, Winston Churchill ws the UK’s Chancellor. He played it very straight, with a preoccupation with balancing the budget. He also took the Uk back onto the Gold Exchange, despite warnings from Keynes that the move would be deflationary. In 1928 he reinforced his neoclassical credentials, saying very little additional employment and no permanent employment can be created by state borrowing and state expenditure. That is, of course, the exact ...
Oct 22, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 478
In UK politicians of all persuasions agree that foreign investment I s important to add to the growth of the UK economy. Steve says you have to have foreigners buying into the UK to counter the currency losses from a sizeable balance of trade deficit. But a lot of that investment will see profits being repatriated back overseas. And then there’d the overseas investment in UK bonds and shares. Andy Burnham, the Manchester Mayor who seems to be positioning himself to replace Keir Starmer, has said...
Oct 15, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 477
recent spoke at a meeting of Jeremy Corbyn’s new venture – Your Party. Steve gave a presentation on how governments can spend more without worrying about the deficit, provided it was done sensibly. The argument that the private sector buying up government bonds will crowd out investment in other initiatives is bunkum. The private sector can still borrow for investment, perhaps benefiting from the enhanced infrastructure and trading environment government spending has created. But Phil argues the...
Oct 08, 2025•49 min•Season 1Ep. 476
During the pandemic central banks had no choice but to buy up government bonds. There were just so many of them being issued. That’s why the UK’s quantitative easing program totalled more than £900 billion during 2020-1. Recently, the bank – like other central banks the world over – are trying to unwind these huge additions to their balance sheet. Recently the Bank of England slowed down the pace at which they sold-off these assets. Why? In part because this process of ‘quantitative tightening’ ...
Oct 01, 2025•44 min•Season 1Ep. 475
You would assume that government spending is largely designed to help those on lower incomes. The NHS was designed to ensure free healthcare for all. The same for public education. And for welfare payments. So, I theory, the more the government spends, the more wealth is transferred to lower incomes. This week Phil and Steve explore the idea that rising government deficits actually help the rich. That’s because the so-called debt is financed by the issuance of bonds, much of which is nought on t...
Sep 23, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 474
After the war the European economy was humming along, with growth rates of 5 percent or more. Now Germany’s forecast to grow by just 0.1 percent. Allowing for population growth and inflation and it’s an economy in decline. Steve says part of the problem is the assumption that rising government debt is bad for the economy – the old neoclassical belief that if the government spends, it crowds out the private sector. They’ve been testing that theory in Europe for a while now, and it isn’t working f...
Sep 17, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 473
Copyright and IP rights has always been notoriously difficult to protect. Does it become impossible with the rise of AI? The ideas presented to you through your favourite AI engine come from somewhere whose ideas are being used to support an argument. Or, if you create an artwork that is analysed and used to create other artworks, has copyright been infringed, or is what we would have traditionally called inspiration? Phil asks, is it time to just admit defeat and accept that copyright is an out...
Sep 10, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 472
We keep hearing about the productivity gains from AI. This week Phil asks Steve about the difference between productivity for a company versus the societal benefits. For example, AI and robots might do a job more efficiently than a human, but it’ll chew up energy in the process, and the human will still be consuming energy as well, unless robots start killing us off. So, this revolution might make some companies more efficient, but as a society as a whole what is the price we are paying? Or is P...
Sep 03, 2025•45 min•Season 1Ep. 471
The small number of technologists who increasingly control the planet’s wealth and political and social agenda are, it seems, big supporters of UBI. Elon Musk is at the forefront of this push. And why wouldn’t he be? His vision is a future of unbounding economic growth, in which the work of humans is almost completely replaced by robots, leaving us all plenty of time to pursue interests, engage in deep philosophical thought or, more likely, get fat watching daytime TV with no sense of purpose. T...
Aug 27, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 470
18th century economist Richard Cantillon theorised that new money added to the economy always reaches the wealthiest people first. If there’s a lot of it, the extra supply will push up prices, but the rich won’t feel it, they’ll just create it. The impact down the track is that the poor, surviving with the same money as before, get hit with the higher prices. Phil suggests that wouldn’t be the case if extra money was created through government spending. It would be the workers and those on welfa...
Aug 20, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 469
Phil and Steve pick up from last week’s discussion about the merits of central planning. Last time they talked about how big companies, like Walmart in the US, plan centrally, yet free marketeers have a problem with that sort of coordination being applied to the free market. This week Phil asks how you can ensure that government planning can ensure resources are allocated effectively. For example, isn’t there a risk that you’ll use raw materials and labour to satisfy the wants of the very rich, ...
Aug 13, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 468
In one of his many walks around his neighbourhood Phil has been listening to a book, The People's Republic of Walmart , by Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski. Basically, a contrarian economist and a journalist teaming up together. Could such a combination ever really work? The book highlights how part of Walmart’s success story was its meticulous central planning, in contrast to Sears, a business decimated by an adherence to a market based internal structure. 30 internal division competed for...
Aug 06, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 467
Lesotho (pronounced ,li-su-tu0 is a small African nature that President Trump threatened with 50% tariffs, describing as a country nobody had ever heard of. Maybe that’s enough for his disciples to dismiss the hardship tariffs will place on the country, where youth unemployment is rife and the minimum wage is US$100 per month. Phil says twenty years ago America was trying to help countries like Lesotho, with tariff free trade to help the economy grow. Why? Because as Steve points out, if develop...
Jul 30, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 466
There is a huge reliance on data to aid decision making – whether it’s Investors wanting to know where to move money, central banks pretending to understand the economy, governments making policy decisions or companies planning for their future. Sadly, data collection faces two challenges. One is a lack of sufficient government spending. As Steve points out, perhaps Texas would be more prepared for the horrendous flooding of the last few weeks, if they hadn’t sacked so many meteorologists. The o...
Jul 23, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 465
In real terms the amount the UK spends on healthcare has risen from £500 in 1970 to £3,000 per person today. That’s a massive increase, but the payback has been that we are living 10 years longer. Ask people if they would be prepared to spend 10% of their income to live ten years longer, most would say yes. Yet we have a real problem in having the government spending more on healthcare. As always, it gets back to the question of where is the money coming from? A government provided healthcare sy...
Jul 16, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 464
Financial markets don’t like it when governments announce plans to spend more money. That’s why there’s concern over Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which will add, by some accounts, $4 trillion to the US budget deficit over the next decade. Steve Keen says it’s not a problem. Banks buy up the bonds and the central bank ensures they have the liquidity to do so. In which case, why are people ditching US bonds in favour of other sovereign debt elsewhere? And isn’t there a risk that higher treas...
Jul 09, 2025•44 min•Season 1Ep. 463
There’s been a lot of talk lately about de-dollarisation. In other words, global investors are parking less of their money in US dollars (in the form of US treasuries/bonds). What was once considered a safe choice, is now seen as having more risk, and that’s being accentuated right now by the falling value of the US dollar. If, as an overseas investor, you bought US government bonds a t the start of the year, they’d be worth 10 percent less now, simply because that’s how much the dollar has fall...
Jul 02, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 462
There was an article in The Economist last week, shared widely in press around the globe, about the apparent fixation with manufacturing. Aussie economist Saul Eslake calls it Manufacturing Fetishism, with government support focused more on that sector than anything else. President Trump wants to bring home everything from steelmaking to drug production and is putting up tariff barriers to do so. Britain is considering subsidising manufacturers’ energy bills; Narendra Modi, India’s prime ministe...
Jun 25, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 461
There’s an irony that the UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has imposed an inheritance tax on farmers, whilst a trade agreement with the US could see Britain selling-the-farm on a farm grander scale. Phil argues that some sort of tax on the inheritance of farms makes sense kif its only used as a tax dodge. Jeremy Clarkson bought his farm (reportedly for £6 million) and had a farm manager run it for 10 years before he started making his TV series. If we he died before the new tax rules the £6 million w...
Jun 18, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 460
Bill Gates has predicted that within 10 years we’ll be working a two-day week, thanks to advances in AI. He says it’ll mean a vast rethinking of the workplace. It’s not too dissimilar to Keynes's prediction in the 1930s that wed al be working 15-hour weeks, with more time to enjoy the good things in life. Of course, Keynes was wrong. We are working longer hours with loads more stress. Tools to aid productivity have freed up time for us to take new jobs and add to the economic output. Steve says ...
Jun 11, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 459
There are challenges that the insurance industry faces, even though it can look like a licence to print money, Since the Big Bang of the nineties, when deregulation allowed the industry to flourish, insurance now accounts for 2.5% of UK GDP. Not bad money for an industry that is a cost to society, rather than a benefit. Until now the business model has been simple; charge a premium based on the risk profile of the customer, avoid high risk customers altogether and invest the payments you receive...
Jun 04, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 458
The pandemic killed 200 thousand people in the UK. Are we ready for the next time? Experts reckon will be even less prepared should we see another pandemic in the near future. Prof Tom Koch from the University of British Columbia reckons we don’t have long to wait - the next one could strike in the next five to eight years. If you were a virus with an understanding of how economics is taught, this is exactly how you would have planned it. Yet governments to spend a fortune on the first blow, kno...
May 28, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 457
Economists seem conditioned to think that we need to suffer before an economy can get back on track. They argue an economy can’t grow if there is a large amount of accrued government debt. That the economy needs confidence to grow, and the confidence won’t exist the government owes a lot of money. Phil suggests to Steve that confidence and the private sector’s a willingness to invest are two staple requirements for economic growth. A government deficit will also help, but does it really help in ...
May 22, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 456
It’s clear to just about everyone that we won’t reach the climate targets set out in the Paris agreement. It was a pipe dream even before President Trump v2.0 came along. The various COP summits, which rely on agreement from everyone, are nothing more than gabfests. They are a COP-out. This was recognised in a paper this month from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, entitled ‘The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change’. There are some sound observations, says Ste...
May 14, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 455
