December 2015 - Page 2 of 3

Herd Psychology | Money Markets | John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes adopted the term herd psychology to explain the irrational behaviour of investors and banks in the boom leading to the ineevitable bust.

Keynes suggested the government should hire people to demolish South London and then rebuild it. He wasn’t serious, but he was making a serious point. If the government borrowed to create jobs, people would spend more, confidence would rise, and the economy would recover. If you picked the right moment, he insisted the extra spending would pay for itself by producing higher tax revenues.

Global Financial Markets | Europe | Gustav Horn | John Maynard Keynes

After resigning from The Treasury, Keynes spent time writing, studying and speculating on the global financial markets. Strong countries in Europe must lead.

That you can never get rid of uncertainty and that economies are made up of people, not numbers. More than anyone, Keynes wanted economics to the respected as a modern science.

Market Crash | World Trade Balance | World Bank | Bretton Woods

We’re ALL in this together would become the mantra of John Maynard Keynes, and he would return to it regularly. The Global market crash of 2008 forced unity of governments.

We now have a Prime Minister who, on one fundamental point, appears to disagree with John Maynard Keynes.

The Childhood of John Maynard Keynes | Bloomsbury Set | Versailles Treaty

As a young man John Maynard Keynes was a member of the bohemian Bloomsbury Set. A group that would significantly change Keynes’ outlook.

Will Hutton “Keynes foresaw that the reparations were too onerous, would have to be adjusted and that actually you are laying the seeds of the next European conflagration. He thought it was unbelievably short-sighted. He was right.”

John Maynard Keynes | Joseph Stiglitz | Philip Booth | Sir Mervyn King

Stephanie Flanders considers how spending money the country doesn’t have will boost a flagging economy. Just one of the fiscal ideas of John Maynard Keynes.

John Maynard Keynes spent years in this house in London, developing ideas that helped shape some of the most important events in the past century, helping to save capitalism from the Great Depression, funding the war against the Nazis, and building a new post-war economic order that helped pave the way for decades of growth and rising prosperity.

Welfare State | Nobel Prize for Economics | Lionel Robbins

Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel prize for Economics in 1974. Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 and would promote the welfare state ideals,

But it wasn’t really the free market that Hayek wanted. Hayek’s followers would say the deregulated financial system that came out of the 80s and 90s played a big role in the financial crisis because it was only ever half free.

Rampant Inflation | Boom and Bust | Richard Zundritsch | Benjamin Strong

For many economists the regular cycle of boom and bust is an inevitable consequence of a free-market. But rampant inflation can wreak havoc.

Friedrich Hayek’s prediction came out of what he saw happening at America’s new central bank. The Federal Reserve had been set up in 1913 to stabilise America’s notoriously shaky private banks by offering them a reliable source of credit.

Economic Healing | Financial Crisis is Natural Healing | John Papola | Esca Hayek

Friedrich Hayek viewed recession as a natural part of the recovery of bust. An economic healing that must be endured for the long-term good.

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek makes a moral argument that government attempts to control the economy ultimately enslave its people.

Free Market | Federal Reserve | Peter Schiff | Professor Bruce Caldwell | Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Hayek is a firm believer in a free market and is convinced that government meddling is deeply damaging to economic stability.

It’s our desire to control it that most often turns it against us. Hayek thought meddling by government could make it harder for the market to do its job by distorting the signals it was sending to buyers and sellers, and the meddling involved in the government’s control of the supply of money, Hayek decided, could be most damaging of all.