For economics nerds like me the last week has been riveting. Paul Krugman, a Nobel-prizewinning member of the economics establishment, has been debating with Steve Keen, a radical who’s long argued that the conventional economics taught in universities is woefully unrealistic because it ignores important features of the real world like uncertainty, the role of banks, debt and how money is created.

I first published this short series of essays in 1992/93. They were a response to the catastrophic application of the tenets of Monetarism to the British economy, the resultant unemployment and social dislocation, the consequences of which persist even now. Much of their content is a criticism on Monetarism, the economic theory postulated by its architect and chief advocate, Milton Friedman.

A couple of days ago, Zero Hedge reported that a lot of student loans are delinquent: As many as 27% of all student loan borrowers are more than 30 days past due.