Contra the latest from Ken Rogoff, in which he feels compelled to bash "Keynesianism." Of course, the other dead economist that provokes terror is Karl Marx. There is actually a connection between Keynes and Marx in neoliberals minds, which are dominated by the ideal of "the market state," which in today's world is tantamount to the corporate state. "Keynesianism" is a cognate of "socialism" for them, and they are doing their best to esstablish that identity in everyone else's mind too.
The question remains of why we keep observing eminent economists that bash Keynesian policies even when this is inconsistent with (or irrelevant to) their general argument . Barring bad faith, I can’t find any other explanation than an ancestral aversion to Keynes and to its policy prescriptions (a couple of years ago Paul Krugman coined the term of Keynesophobia): whatever argument you are making , just find a way to slip into it a couple of paragraphs claiming that Keynesian policies would not work.Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist
Living in Terror of Dead Economists
Francesco Saraceno
(h/t Mark Thoma at Economist's View)
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