".. the actual peaks are just what you'd expect if there's been a major collapse. GDP has stopped growing and no one can pay their bills."

Yees, keep going... What it also shows us is that it doesn't tend to plateau. It's either going up or down. The downside of the peaks are associated with paying down debt (deleveraging) and are certainly a different economic climate than the upside. Of course, when you are paying down debt, 'growth' is difficult and has other social consequences.

Of course the timing of the peak is difficult to predict. Lucky for us, Keen has updated his figures in the intervening years and shown us that the US has already peaked, and we likely have as well (although how big the downside will be is difficult to say isn't it?).

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/06/13/empirical-and-theoretical-reasons-why-the-gfc-is-not-behind-us/

There may be no cause to worry, but while the actual house prices haven't fallen a massive amount (although they have fallen), the average amount of time it takes to sell a house has risen significantly, and there are other indicators indicating that house price increases may stagnate.

One of Keen's ideas is that fast rising house prices attract investors, and so is a sort of feedback, but there can be a negative feedback as well, that is if property investors are worried that their highly leveraged property is dropping in value, then they may start to try and offload them before the prices drop further. Some are arguing that this may already be happening. I dunno about that either, economics has a terrible predictive record, but if the growth in house prices starts to slow (if not decrease), what would make them an attractive proposition for new buyers?

Geoff,
you bear me out more eloquently than I possibly could myself.

This is very touching: <Living systems have long since solved this problem. They grow, they stabilise and they continue. Unlimited growth is pathological - a plague or a cancer> Agreed.

<Humans are part of the living network of the planet, and for a long time we followed this pattern>
Yes, but what does that have to do with the present state of affairs?

<There are many ways already known for us to dramatically reduce our material throughputs, so we have a much lighter footprint>
I have no idea what you mean by "throughputs", but what about the sheer logistics of 7 billion and counting?

<We are not limited to past kinds of "capitalism". If we make quality of life the objective of our economies, instead of GDP, and increasing GDP, then we can reduce material throughput and improve our quality of life - simultaneously>
This is precisely the kind of idealism I'm talking about!
There's only one kind of capitalism. The other kinds are just variations on a theme. Quality of life is not, will never be, the objective. To imagine it might be so is breathtakingly naive!
But for arguments sake, how do you propose we pull that off--make quality of life the objective, rather than profit (and what is quality of life btw?)?
<We have to overcome the inertia of the presently powerful, who don't want anything to change of course>
Yes!
I prefer that "presently" should mean "soon", But never mind; how do we overcome the presently powerful, bolstered as they are by hegemony?

<The present system results from an unholy alliance of the self-interested rich and the deluded economics mainstream, whose core theory is pseudoscience>
What is your holy solution?
Geoff, this really does look vacuous and you're not doing radical thought any favours.

Squeers,

What I wrote was the briefest indication of conclusions of my thinking and writing. There are not only articles but books you can read, to fill in background, if you follow the links I gave before. So I think your criticism is a bit hasty.

Regarding your comments:

Human economies could be brought into compatibility with the biosphere.

Throughput refers to the amounts of resources we harvest/dig, use once and dump. We could use them more frugally with existing designs, and we could seriously recycle almost everything if we set about it.

I we limit ourselves to what has already existed, we are condemned to repeat the past. I argue for a market economy that is managed for quality of life, and that does not produce such unequal concentrations of ownership and wealth. To do this we have to reform some of the mechanisms at work in our economies and societies. This is neither old capitalism nor socialism.

Quality of life is what we decide it is, I don't want to be prescriptive. Except that we must become compatible with the biosphere, or our system won't survive.

To overcome the presently powerful, we work out how we want the world to work and persuade others to join us. That can lead to a political tipping point.

If you want to determine whether housing is expensive in Australia, you might consider a "Big Mac" comparison or median income to house price ratio. By both these measures Australian housing is expensive. By what comparative measure does Curmudgeon determine otherwise?