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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

RE KRUGMAN KLEIN KEYNES SELF CORRECTING MARKETS INTELLECTUALS AND US

Krugman, on his blog, cites an article by Klein in The Washington Post, critical of Cantor's misreading of Keynes.


They, Krugman and Klein, think if Keynes were only properly understood and followed, by both economists and politicians, everything would be ok.


The problem is that Keynes shared, with other economists generally,  a trust of  'the market' as the arbiter of national industrial commercial fiscal and financial policies. 


Occasionally even generally virtuous and wholesome markets get constipated, that is the story even a good Keynesian will tell.


That is the problem.


Here is the phrase from Klein: "markets are usually self-correcting...."


There are many problems with this view:


1. Markets do not go in inherently good directions.
2. They do not go there in inherently good ways. In fact, quite the opposite, quite blindly blithely and wastefully, in fact, more often than not.
3. They do not make best use of resources to get there.
4.  Their evolution is not 'correct' in the first place, and thus they can hardly be said to self correct themselves. Begs the question of 'correct'.
5. They, markets as a proxy term for 'economics in general', tend to improperly ('incorrectly') overbear politics in general, rather than the other way around. 


It is as ridiculous to suggest that economics, or markets, are 'self correcting' as that politics is.

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