Top 15 Steve Keen Quotes

You have a voice, which has been perhaps been quiescent on matters economic because you have in the past deferred to the authority of the economist. There is no reason to remain quiet.

If a 19th century capitalist Machiavelli had wished to cripple the socialist intelligentsia of the 20th century, he could have invented no more cogent weapon than the labour theory of value. Yet this theory was the invention, not of a defender of capitalism, but of its greatest critic: Karl Marx.

There are numerous theorems in economics that rely upon mathematically fallacious propositions.

If financial markets aren't efficient, then what are they? According to the 'fractal market hypothesis', they are highly unstable dynamic systems that generate stock prices which appear random, but behind which lie deterministic patterns.

If values are fairly evenly distributed around an average, then roughly two-thirds of all outcomes will be one standard deviation other side of the average.

If investors disagree about future prospects of companies, then inevitably the future is not going to turn out as most — or perhaps even any — investors expect.

The EMH cannot apply in a world in which investors differ in their expectations, in which the future is uncertain, and in which borrowing is rationed.

Since in reality the stock market is inhabited by mere mortals, there is no way that the stock market can be efficient in the way that economists define the term.

Trusting souls who accept economic assurances that markets are efficient are unlikely to fare any better this time when the Bull gives way to the Bear.

The belief that a capitalist economy is inherently stabilising is also one for which inhabitants of market economies may pay dearly in the future.

Rather like the Bible is for many Christians, the General Theory is the essential economics reference which few economists have ever read.

If there was never any difference between the value of commodities someone desired to sell and buy on the market, then no-one would ever desire to accumulate wealth. But an essential feature of capitalism is the existence of a group of agents with precisely that intention.

The obsession with equilibrium has imposed enormous costs on economics.

Why do economists persist in modelling the economy with static tools when dynamic ones exist; why do they treat as stationery an entity which is forever changing?

Economic theory in general ignores processes which take time to occur, and instead assumes that everything occurs in equilibrium.