The other day, and not for the first time since the current, lazily-paced, rambling economic crisis started, I came across someone trying to bring Lord Keynes up. I was listening to one of the local (i.e. UK) radio stations I came across a woman advocating - not in a comic voice, as one'd expect - Keynseian policies. The interviewer didn’t laugh, or comment, or ask an appropriate question that would shut the woman up in an instant.... they just kept talking as if it was a serious conversation. It was quite weird: as if you'd hear a bunch of scientists discussing the habits of dwarfs (the fairy-tale guys, not the unfortunate people).
I tend to notice first the funny side of things, so yes – I did have a laugh or two. But even if I’m nowhere nearly as clever as the late Lord, I do do some thinking - and after a moment I saw the serious side of the whole thing, too.
And it scared the shit out of me.
So just in case, for those of you - especially here in the U.K. - who may have missed something: KEYNES IS DEAD, IN BOTH RUNS*. Please then, have some respect for the dead and don’t bring him up. Or he’ll come with at least one of two other fellow ghosts: Inflation or Stagnation. If not the third one, that worst kind of a Frankenstein-like unloved monster: Stagflation.
* to be precise: he may seem alive and kicking for a while, but that’s misleading: there’s no real life in him, it’s all superficial – in the short run he’s a zombie and in the long run - he's deadly.
