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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Why Scott Sumner Hates Keynesian Talk

      This was actually the title of one of his peevish anti-Keynesian pieces in December. Why does he hate it so much? Sometimes the dislike of Keynesianism goes so deep that he even attacks Keynes, the man, writing a post that supposedly shows Keynes was not a great-or even an at all good-investor.  Why? He lost money in 1921 and his wealthy father backstopped him. If having a benefactor behind you disqualifies you from any conversation about great investing then there aren't many investors that can get in that conversation.

       Let's listen to some Keynesian talk-from Keynes himself. In this very interesting paper by Ambrosi we got the following insights. The paper was specifically discussing Keynes' relationship to Pigou but these comments make it clear why Sumner and Monetarists in general hold him in such low regard.

       "The orthodox { relative price oriented { school cannot accept Keynes' effective demand arguments because that contradicts their claim that it is only relative price adjustments that count and nothing else."
       http://www.postkeynesian.net/ucamonly/Ambrosi.pdf

      Let's look at how Keynes defines effective demand-the orthodox school doesn't like to admit there is any sense in effective demand but rather simply demand.

      "The amount of labour N which the entrepreneurs decide to employ depends on the sum (D) of two quantities, namely D1, the amount which the community is expected to spend on consumption, and D2, the amount which it is expected to devote to new investment. D is what we have called above the effective demand."

      Note that this definition makes total nonsense of Sumner's definition of saving as "spending on capital goods (!)"

      But the real punchline is that Keynes says there is more going on than relative price adjustments-that cuts Monetarism and this wounds them to their core. So they peevishly "hate Keynesian talk."

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