QOTD - Keynes

The NYT has reviews of two new books on the economist John Maynard Keynes.

The reviewer, Justin Fox, tells us that "what’s vital about Keynes today is not so much a well-defined economic doctrine as the attitude and the tools with which he attacked economic problems". "He thought theory — including conventional economic theory — was important and useful. But he was willing to go straight back to the drawing board when it didn’t provide satisfactory answers to his questions. The contrast with modern academic economists and their attachment to elegant mathematical models is instructive."

Neither should the Keynes comeback be seen as an attempt to establish his “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” first published in 1936, as an economic bible to be consulted at every turn by students and policy makers. Keynes would have found such an effort silly. He was dismissive of those who leaned too heavily on rules derived from a sacred text, be it the Koran or “Das Kapital.” Clarke quotes him saying in 1944, after a meeting with several of his American disciples, “I was the only non-Keynesian there.”