How rising debt causes inequality and crisis - Steve Keen

This 29-minute video ("How rising debt causes inequality and crisis") from Steve Keen describes both the current economic crisis and why conventional economists are at a loss to explain it. Keen speaks in English and waits for a French translation, which actually turns out to be useful. It lets you digest what he's said...so the actual presentation occurs in something like half the video runtime.

Both the right (e.g. Mankiw) and "left" (e.g. Krugman) in conventional economics ignore the role of private debt in the economy, yet Keen demonstrates convincingly that it correlates directly with unemployment, and that shunning this economic measure is a kind of blindness that has rendered conventional economics as useless as an advanced superstition.

One little irony that may appeal to this audience: Keen describes modern economics as a religious cult since it seems determined to ignore facts in favor of faith in a clearly flawed explanation of how the economy works. Keen even offers some psychological explanation for this adherence to theory in the face of facts to the contrary. To me, it's ironic, since the solution Keen offers for high (private) debt levels is a "modern debt jubilee"! Hey! Isn't that something that originated with religious practice? Just sayin...