Michael Blastland
speaker
745 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2011
last heard Aug 2011
Michael Blastland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
People.
Getting and spending, investing and borrowing, yes, but more than that.
People with bad backs and hot dates.
Optimistic, pessimistic people.
People who switch behaviour because of, what, something in the air or water.
If you heard last week's programme, you'll have caught us in front of the Phillips machine, this remarkable mechanical representation of the economy when we were talking about the way in which the economy is or has been represented as a machine, cog-like.
Well, we've come back because...
Incredibly, this machine has something which is strangely not mechanical.
It's very human.
It's what Keynes himself called animal spirits.
And down at the bottom of the Phillips machine is a vat of water which essentially represents optimism and pessimism.
And I think this is wonderful.
It makes machine-like human emotion to some extent.
The wheel comes full circle.
Invented in 1959, the Phillips machine represents the flows of money through the economy with water through pipes.
Its unofficial curator is Alan McRobie.
Alan, can you reproduce for us a boom and bust?
So we've got a balanced budget from the government, as much flowing in as flowing out.
So the idea is we're going to make everybody a bit pessimistic.
And this is going to create a boom because they're all going to start throwing money at investment or a bus if it's the other way around.
Showing 181–200 of 745 · page 10 of 38
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