Video: A brief introduction to The Global Minotaur, courtesy of ScotlandUnite
Last Friday, 2nd September, a day after the launch of The Global Minotaur, ScotlandUnite, the trades union, invited me to their London offices where they kindly interviewed me on a number of issues, including the book. Here is the video of what I had to say about The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy. A big thank you to ScotlandUnite.
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A video which explains briefly the second part of Varoufakis-Halevi-Theocharakis book, titled “Modern Political Economics”.
The whole book, but especially the part of the period 1971-2008, (Global Minotaur), let any economist to recognize and finally to confirm the limits of Economics and the Unended Quest, (using Karl Popper’s eminent work) of Political Economy.
After 2008, not only our world change, but also our science. A new intellectual battle has already started.
Dear Christos,
“has already started”? I very much hope so. In Germany, there was a economics conference some weeks ago, but it did not look like a new beginning according to the majority of the attendees.
My opinion is, the first sign of a new beginning in this science, will be a new sense of reservation and humbleness, a virtue which has been common to all sciences. True science knows best its own limitations, Sokrates knew that. There is still so much ideology in what is openly discussed as economic science these days. I hope that scientists like Prof. Varoufakis stand up and try to save the little remaining honour of this science, instead of just playing with stardom and political influence.
Xenofon,
Seconded.
Dear Xenofon,
What we understand as Economics, (what our generation understand), it is nothing more than Paul Samuelson’s Economics. Unfortunetaly, the Samuelsonian Economics has limits. Using them as a guide in our effort to understand reallity, they might operate as an obstacle of our trip. They have a dead end, since they lack of imagination.
In order to escape from that dead end, we need to import in our analytical approach, a method to compare theory with reallity. Our laboratory is History. Thus, we have to re-introduce History in Economics.
The whole effort, seems to be a battle. A battle among Economists who understand the Economy as a nexus of different humans’ actions, (and different humans)…and those economists who understand the Economy as an intergration of actions of the same human, of the rational human.
It is not just a scientific choice….it is a way of thinking about ourselves….
Dear Comrades, we were delighted to host Yanis – please forgive our amateurish endeavours as we are still learning – but we feel it is very important to provoke a debate across Europe about what sort of economy and society we want. Yanis’ contribution has been – and remains – immense and we want to assist this debate.
Andrew Brady and Peter Welsh – who interviewed Yanis in clip
Excellent and thought-provoking analysis. The final few minutes – “a glut of savings with nowhere to go” hit the spot for me. To me the contemporary problem is simply that labour and production have become inadequate investment vehicles for capital; they simply do not promise a sufficient rate of return for capital’s present expectations. Financial capital has thus become disconnected from the rest of the economy. This statement seems to be both a cool economic analysis, but is also a description of a tragedy (one I live in). I look forward to reading the book and Yanis’ account of the historical origin of this. I would be very interested in reading Yanis’ views on the American economist Michael Hudson – or vice versa!
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