Dirk Ehnts — John Maynard Keynes: “I could create, I could afford” (Public Service Employment)

Here is a quote from John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1933:

If I had the power today I should surely set out to endow our capital cities with all the appurtenances of art and civilisation on the highest standards of which the citizens of each were individually capable, convinced that what I could create, I could afford – and believing that money thus spent would not only be better than any dole, but would make unnecessary any dole. For with what we have spent on the dole in England since the War we could have made our cities the greatest works of man in the world.

econoblog 101
John Maynard Keynes: “I could create, I could afford” (Public Service Employment)
Dirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin

The quote is from National self-sufficiency (Yale Review, 1933).  See the whole of Section IV. It's brilliant.

Two Radio Links from this Week

First link to an audio "appearance"  by Dan Kervick from earlier this week at a New Hampshire's WNHN radio here  (Dan enters at about the 30:00 minute mark).

Dan talks about his recent post where he establishes a view towards both a PUBLIC form of enterprise and a PRIVATE form of enterprise and the appropriate roles that each form of enterprise play in a well functioning economy.  Dan hits it out of the park here.

And another link here to what I might term a "fringe" radio show hosted by a Jeff Rense and an interview of Webster Tarpley; lately of the United Front Against Austerity.

Tarpley advocates an approach to "recovery"  utilizing an approach in some ways similar to what Dan  advocates, i.e. more or less via an expanded Public Enterprise.

They both cite recent output from economist/writer Paul Krugman in their presentations.

Tarpley takes some nice shots at the Austrian nutjobs and the U.S.'s Ron Paul morons, but Tarpley though is still out of paradigm here where he exhibits a misunderstanding of the operational impotency of monetary policy, and advocates for the Fed to provide long term, interest free "loans" I guess to the US Treasury in order to finance several trillion dollars worth of critical infrastructure projects to lead economic recovery; this is not necessary.

Functionally, the Fed is simply the Treasury's fiscal agent and top level accountant, absolute fiscal authority resides with our government via the appropriations laws passed by Congress and signed by the Executive, the Fed just keeps track of the balances that are appropriated, transfers the balances, and produces ex post reports that document these operations.

Tarpley cannot see that his Fed loan scheme is mathematically equivalent to beo & Joe's Trillion Dollar Coin procedure as the end result is the Treasury's account is fully provisioned with USD balances to account for future $Trillion appropriations that would authorize much needed public sector led infrastructure projects, upgrades and maintenance that would help to lead a true U.S. economic recovery.

But in summary, both of these approaches in the end have a view towards a more aggressive public sector led economic recovery for the U.S.  A view that obviously seems to be currently gaining attention outside the mainstream of media and conventional public policy sources.