The subversive wonders of Kilkenomics – where economics meets stand-up

‘What is a Minsky moment, anyway?’ asks Gerry Stembridge, an Irish satirist. ‘I’ve been reading about them in the papers and have often wondered’. Stembridge is putting the question to Paul McCulley, chief economist at Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund with over $200 billion under management, one of the ten most influential economists on earth. McCulley is sporting a T-shirt and jeans. The two men, Celtic comic and American financial whiz, are on stage in a theatre in Kilkenny, a bijou provincial city in south-east Ireland. It’s Saturday night and they’re facing a sell-out crowd — all of whom have paid to watch a debate on global economics and most of whom aren’t waiting until the interval to have a drink. ‘Right — Minsky moments,’ says McCulley, launching into a deeply technical explanation. We hear of the fabled post-war Chicago-born economist Hyman Minsky and his financial instability hypothesis. Minsky deeply admired the 19th-century Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, we’re told, and developed an influential post-Keynesian criticism of the neoclassical synthesis.