Jm Keynes Quotes

Economists who simply advised leaving the economy alone, governments whose first instincts, apart from protecting the gold standard by deflationary policies, was to stick to financial orthodoxy, balance budgets and cut costs, were visibly not making the situation better. Indeed, as the depression continued, it was argued with considerable force not least by J.M. Keynes who consequently became the most influential economist of the next forty years - that they were making the depression worse. Those of us who lived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impossible to understand how the orthodoxies of the pure free market, then so obviously discredited, once again came to preside over a global period of depression in the late 1980s and 1990s, which, once again, they were equally unable to understand or to deal with. Still, this strange phenomenon should remind us of the major characteristic of history which it exemplifies: the incredible shortness of memory of both the theorists and practitioners of economics. It also provides a vivid illustration of society's need for historians, who are the professional remembrancers of what their fellow-citizens wish to forget.

Capitalism, argued J.M. Keynes, is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for everyone’s benefit. When the freedom to grow trumps responsibility to the polis, however, “productivity” becomes a euphemism for “increased unemployment.

«La dificultad es que los líderes capitalistas en la ciudad y en el parlamento son incapaces de distinguir medidas novedosas para salvaguardar el capitalismo de lo que llaman bolchevismo. Si el capitalismo de estilo antiguo fuera intelectualmente capaz de defenderse no sería desalojado durante muchas generaciones. Pero, afortunadamente para los socialistas, hay pocas posibilidades de ello. Creo que las semillas de la decadencia intelectual del capitalismo individualista se encuentran en una institución que es más bien característica del sistema del feudalismo que precedió al capitalismo: el principio hereditario. El principio hereditario en la transmisión de la riqueza y en el control de los negocios es la razón por la cual el liderazgo de la causa capitalista es débil y estúpida. Está demasiado dominado por hombres de tercera generación. Nada hará que una institución social decaiga con más certeza que su apego al principio hereditario». «KEYNES, J.M. (1925)

I know of only three people who really understand money.” 1 J.M. Keynes

The British desire to appease Germany before 1933 is intelligible in the light of the reign of liberalism; appeasement, as an enlightened policy of justice for all, including Germany, was a child of that outlook. For over a decade it was promoted (ineffectually, because of French recalcitrance) by men as diverse as J.M. Keynes and Ramsay MacDonald, Gilbert Murray and Stanley Baldwin. But appeasement did not end with the ascent of Hitler to the chancellorship. In this respect, 1933–1935 marked a watershed; appeasement, gradually but perceptibly, changed from a policy based on 'morality' and on a quest for 'justice' to one compelled by fear and expediency. Thus appeasement changed its meaning.

As the economist J.M. Keynes said: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas, as in escaping from the old ones.