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Garys Economics (Basically economics for dummies)

Somafunk said:
a lifetime of gaming the system
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This is why I'd rather trust old farts. At their stage they have past the age of 'gaming' and have learnt that there's no magic.

Of course, when young, you can game like hell and hope for the best. If you're good, and lucky, it might even work out. But doing this without a solid amount of backup capital is madness.

If you have only little money to play around with, start by using common sense. A very oldfartish remark I know.
 
Somafunk said:
Why exactly?
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A lot of this covid money has ended up in pockets where it shouldn't have. Tracing its whereabouts is a lost cause, and rock-hard assumptions from various writers are speculation at best. And speculation is the wrong approach for working with money.

If you've got money to burn, then have fun. If not, start by not losing what you have.
 
Darren said:
I didn't say that it did
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Sure. My point is that he's using his back story of making a ton of money as a trader to lend credibility to his views on 'economics'.

I used to work on trading systems and in my experience many traders are very smart (certainly not all!) but have very specialised fields of knowledge focused on the instruments they trade.

Being a successful trader doesn't infer any insight into economics. It's not the same thing. You might as well ask Lewis Hamilton to service your gearbox.
 
Fatmarley said:
That's disappointing to hear. I always pictured you as a Hollywood heartthrob type. Kind of young and cool.

It's weird how you build up a picture of someone in your mind.
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I don't know, has there ever been a Hollywood heart throb called Gary? Oldman, dosn't count!
 
garyi said:
I don't know, has there ever been a Hollywood heart throb called Gary? Oldman, doesn't count!
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Gary Cooper, pictured here when he was young and cool, in The Texan (1930)
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Hazelberry said:
Cos it's the law of neoliberalism, venality, & political grifting? I can't believe someone had to make a video about it when a good look around & a seconds thought is all anyone needs.
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Yes, agree. However, when we are told in ten different ways every day that there is no money, people seem to believe it.

As ever, there is plenty of money for the already wealthy, for wars, for pet projects and for corruption.

It is only when it comes to things that benefit the greater number, things like public services, that suddenly the money gets difficult to find.

While I disagree with Gary Stevenson about somethings, he does an excellent job of puncturing some of the myths around money and economics. The most basic is that growing inequality is bad politics, bad economics and bad social policy.

Any economic ideology that does not have reducing inequality as a founding principle is a bad economic ideology.

The fact that we have had such an ideology in charge for so long, is why we, one of the richest most fortunate countries in the world, is in such a mess
 
What Gary Stevenson does well is to get us to question the assumptions that underpin economics today

On of the major problems is that we have a faith based system*. Yes it has mathematical models, but those models are designed to ‘prove’ a faith based assumption that markets tend towards stability because of an “invisible hand”.

The first point is that these models failed to predict recessions and has presided over privatisation and austerity.

Hyman Minsky was one of the few economists who predicted the 2008 crash and shows how we are heading to the next one. We come out of a recession with caution, then things stabilise and finally that stability promises stable returns and encourages riskier and riskier investment until the system collapses again when asset prices fall and debt rises. Stability, as Minsky says, is destabilising.

Steve Keen amongst others talks here** in a jargon free and easily understandable BBC R4 podcast. He says that our system is ”beautiful ugly” and we need to model it as such, and not with the “beautiful beautiful” assumptions currently employed despite evident failures.

*https://eaarthsblogtumblr.wordpress.com/2023/12/14/economists-faith-based-v-science-14-12/
**https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn83s#:~:text=TUC economist Duncan Weldon asks,of the 2008 financial crisis.
 
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Fatmarley said:
Wouldn't back handers be the reason why certain economists say privatise the NHS?
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It is certainly true that private health providers fund politicians. Labour’s shadow health secretary gets money from private health providers, then promises to “hold the doors wide open” for private health providers. Coincidence I’m sure!

The bigger problem is with the mathematical models that Murphy criticises. They are all models based on assumptions, assumptions that are ancient and quasi religious and the models are designed to demonstrate the assumption. When such models are proven wrong by actual events, then it is never the models or the assumptions that are wrong, they just need tweaking.

It should be remembered that all these models assume that markets tend towards equilibrium. Maybe, just maybe, this mystical belief in a free market governed by an ‘invisible hand’, is, er, wrong.

Maybe, in the light of a whole range of endogenous and exogenous destabilising influences that seem to plague our economy, we actually require management by fiscal measures, government investment and grounding in reality?
 
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