This year again – for the third time – I have been invited to speak at the Freie Universität Berlin as part of a lecture series about financial crises and the monetary system organized by the Kriwi Berlin student group. As the European Central Bank and other central banks are about to start their next round of monetary easing and given the much-needed resurgence in climate-related debates, I have dedicated the second part of my talk to the possibility of a Green New Deal. The first part remaining about shadow banking.
With in particular the visit of the current German finance minister Olaf Scholz the week before I spoke, I am pleased to hear that the lecture series is further gaining popularity. Although I could not compete on that level, I was still pleased to hold my presentation in front of a comfortably filled auditorium – this also despite prevailing extreme temperatures.
The slides to my presentation can be found here. (Link to my previous presentation here.)
As usual, I start by showing my favorite finance explanation video (and another about repurchasing agreement).
After a productive discussion, we then discussed the following interview in the subsequent tutorials:
This time again I very much enjoyed my stay in Berlin and look forward to the next one!
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The main supporting material for my talk is the following paper and YouTube video
- “Long Shadows – Collateral Money, Asset Bubbles, and Inflation by J. Wilmot, J. Sweeney, M. Klein and C. Lantz [Credit Suisse] (or my summarized take here)
- Yanis Varoufakis on a Green New Deal (starting at minute 16)
Further recommended reading or watching related to my presentation:
- When The ECB Restarts QE, This Is What It Will Buy by Zero Hedge
- Can we save energy, jobs and growth at the same time? by Jean-Marc Jancovici
Note: I have significantly altered my views on energy since this presentation. I still view renewables as favorable, but a lot less so than presented above. I left out important points like the metallic intensity of “renewables” (thus making them non-renewable) and some more in-depth EROI calculations seem to imply a lot less optimistic outlook. See also this, this or this paper on these topics. More coming, see also my energy section.
Gordon Schücker 