Philip Pilkington: Debunking Economics – An Interview with Steve Keen – Part 1

Steve Keen is an Associate Professor in economics and finance at the University of Western Sydney. The second expanded edition of his popular book Debunking Economics is available now.
Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Philip Pilkington: One cannot help but be struck by the reaction of the economics profession to the recent financial crisis. In the first edition of your book, Debunking Economics, you warned that a crash was probably coming – and in this you weren’t the only one. And yet now, post-crash, neoclassical economists have simply buried their heads in the sand and pretended that rational criticism of their theories simply doesn’t exist. The crash discredits almost all these theories and yet they continue to insist that they remain valid.

They remind me of Christian fundamentalists rabidly arguing against evolution in face of what appears to be insurmountable evidence against their assertions. Could you talk a little about this? How can these people be so deluded? Why won’t they listen to reason?