I will always defend a big spender like J.M. Keynes
29 November 2008
Nancy Dell’Olio makes an impassioned case for Keynesian economics as the necessary remedy for the global crisis. It is to the Cambridge economist that we should turn once more
I am an optimist. One of the reasons why I have always been a fan of the brilliant British economist John Maynard Keynes is that he too was an unashamed optimist who believed in the power of money for making things better. Unemployment, recession, deflation — if we were to believe all we see and read from the courts of the media kings, we might all be depressed into thinking there is no way out.
Born in Cambridge in the year that Karl Marx died, Keynes was a much more intriguing figure than his grey cadre of contemporaries. He brought flair and style to a dull establishment. A friend of Virginia Woolf and married to a ballerina (ballet is my passion), he became the darling of the Bloomsbury Group. Anyone who could say that the ‘economic problem is not — if we look into the future — the permanent problem of the human race’ is a human being with foresight. That was like saying you can make poverty history in the 1930s. For me, as an Italian-American law student at NYU, fascinated by the English intellectual order, he was an inspiration. Imagine, then, my chagrin when I found myself sitting by placement next to an eminent British historian (of that same Cambridge ilk) who had the killjoy temerity to criticise my hero and throw gloom over my social enjoyment of a fine dinner.
I was at a table hosted by Condé Nast chief Nicholas Coleridge. The conversation started off light and bubbly, like champagne, and sparkled with early-evening pleasantries. Soon, however, the talk turned to swopping bleak mid-winter opinions on the world economic crisis, and the good-humoured banter began to stall. Keen to avoid anything too negative with my food, I hoped to raise spirits by turning to the optimistic remedy proposed by Keynes during the dark years of the 1930s. ‘I have always loved a big spender,’ I said, a little flippantly. ‘The worst thing you can do is keep your money in the bank, so you might as well go out and spend it while you have it and help save the European economy.’
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Augustus
November 26th, 2008 4:47pm Report this commentYes, the more you spend, the more important you are!
Jim
November 27th, 2008 11:38am Report this comment"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens" J.M.Keynes.
Your stimulus package is of course inflation. As you sit around fine tables, drinking finer wines, with fine friends, spare a thought for the old lady opening a tin of dog food for her dinner. As all her life savings have been confiscated by the state, in stimulus packages to save wealthy, incompetent, thieving bankers.
Keynes was immoral, and an evil genius.
Tim Calvert
November 27th, 2008 12:20pm Report this commentCongratulations Mr D'Ancona.
You have achieved your ambition - a merger with Hello!
Must rush - Heat Magazine has an insightful ananlysis of the CDS market
Dwight Vandryver
November 28th, 2008 12:28am Report this commentIt's as if Labour is expecting a miracle, or some divine intervention, in a few years time to defray the debt it has, and will be, amassing. Perhaps Ms Dell'Olio would care to enlighten us as to the mechanism that will make this possible. Manufacturing is no longer the UK's forte and the financial services sector have taken a big hit. With the building industry at a standstill, we have become a nation of shopkeepers. The only secure employment appears to be in the public sector, which is non-productive and a constant drain on public spending. It is difficult to see how a 15% VAT rate will revive personal spending, and even if it did, the goods purchased would add yet more to the balance of payments deficit. Let us hope that these concerns live in a virtual world on databases, and that in practical terms, Ms Dell'Olio is correct, but do we live in a virtual world?
JohnAnt
November 28th, 2008 1:49am Report this commentWhat next? Prescott on serialism?
Andrew Forbes
November 28th, 2008 10:32am Report this commentThis was actually written by Craig Brown, surely, and it's brilliant.
Helen Jackson
November 30th, 2008 2:02pm Report this commentWhat a pointless article.
The Spectator is rapidly becoming a vehicle for a cosy clique, seemingly unable to write about issues of national significance unless refracted through the minor details of their everyday lives (Venetia Thompson's sock draw springs to mind), anecdotal evidence about what their mates think, and a heavy dependence on the 'I' key.
Please consider you have a readership which buys the Spectator hoping for quality insights into current affairs from people with superior knowledge, not the outpourings of people the editor has randomly met at dinner parties.
It is unprofessional journalism and hugely off-putting.
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