Prof Steve Keen

In 2008, conventional economics led us blindfolded into the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Over a decade later, they continue to defend a methodology that is utterly inappropriate for the economy, and dangerously misleading about the relationship between the economy and the ecology of our planet.

I am fortunate that I realised how bad mainstream economics was when I was an undergraduate student almost 50 years ago. Since then, I have worked tirelessly to develop an alternative, realistic economics. My book Debunking Economics has let tens of thousands of readers learn in one month the critical knowledge of economics that I spent four decades acquiring. The "complex systems" model of Hyman Minsky's "Financial Instability Hypothesis I developed in 1992 let me warn of the 2008 crisis before it happened. I designed Minsky, the Open Source dynamic modelling program, to make it possible for anyone to build and understand monetary models of the economy. My latest book Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? explains why the crisis happened, and what we have to do to end it. I have just developed the first explanation of production in which energy plays an essential role, opening up the possibility to finally integrate economics and ecology.

But much more needs to be done, and I need your help to do it.

I have done everything till now with support from many colleagues, but with no support from official funding agencies. Almost all the money for economics research goes to develop the mainstream--even after it has failed so abjectly. That will continue to be the case.

Universities have also been starved of research funding over the years, and buried under bureaucratic controls. They no longer provide the time and freedom they once gave to original thinkers like me. It's so bad now that the best way for me to have the time and resources to build a new economics is to leave the University sector, and get supported directly by the public.

Today, students and citizens across the globe are calling for a realistic economics to replace the delusional theories that led us into this economic mess. You can help me produce that realistic economics by becoming my Patron for as little as $1 a month. If I've changed how you think about economics, help me have that impact on others.