Blame It on Keynes

Arrogant. Supercilious. Unbearably boorish. And that's just what his friends called him. John Maynard Keynes is on a lot of people's minds today. The British economist with the outsize ego published his General Theory of Unemployment, Interest, and Money in 1936. President Barack Obama's plan to save the U.S. economy with a new, massive round of government spending is underpinned by "Keynesian economics." Many argue that although the policies come from a very old playbook, Keynes' 73-year-old theory is being tested in full, right now, for the first time. Keynes is an unlikely hero for our time. He came up with the then-radical notion that a government can pull a country out of a deep recession by spending a lot. But by the 1980s, many believed his ideas were utterly discredited. And the debate over "What would John Maynard Keynes do?" continues to this day. The man was as complex and engrossing as his theory. Keynes' most recent biographer, Lord Robert Skidelsky ( whose one-volume abridged ... (link)