The Hour of Minsky

George Magnus, senior economic advisor with UBS in London recently published a research report where he wondered aloud whether we have reached a Minsky moment. That report inspired the making of this column.

We believe that Hyman Minksy is relevant today and not just because we are witnessing this turmoil in the credit and asset markets. Minsky is relevant because the entire capitalist system, as conceived and outlined by Keynes and his neo-classical successors, is at a cross-roads. Perhaps a new theory of Capitalist Development is needed, or perhaps, a thorough reassessment of the existing models of macroeconomic growth and development is needed. And all this at a time when the financial markets, the backbone of any capitalist system, is itself undergoing a transformation.

This column will feature interview with various economists around the world either working in the financial markets or in the academia. Our choice of these economists is based on a number of factors some of which are the quality of research reports, understanding of the financial markets, and an ability to look beyond data and statistics.

We have tried our best to educate ourselves on this subject matter. We did come across quite a few excellent working and research papers on this subject on the web and we have used these to formulate our questions for the interviews. One such paper is by Chris J Wahlen at Cornell written in 1999, three years after Minsky's death.

We hope you'll enjoy reading these pages.