Keynes

[David Morris]

How could any serious intellectual person indict Keyne's theories because
of his personal sexual or other fickle beings?

On Saturday, January 16, 2016, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Good ol' Guido.
>
> He thinks we're all wrong about Hitler, too!
>
> Nice intellectual company you keep.
>
> J
>
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 3:34 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > ... Keynes is a fascinating thing. He has been erected into some kind of
> a
> > colossal wax icon: he is one of those authors who, through posterity's
> > massive, torrential, relentless and extraordinarily abiding mythologizing
> > effort, have come to lose all adherence to their historical, physical
> > existence. And, deep down, Keynes was a mask of such fanatical vanity
> that
> > this kind of modern sanctification must have been precisely the type of
> goal
> > he had been striving to secure for his entire life.
> >
> > Discursively - I mean propaganda-wise - Keynesianism is (or used to be)
> the
> > sort of grand shibboleth that is systematically used and leveraged
> whenever
> > the speaker needs to strike the Liberal pose. In other words, when you
> wish
> > to appear as the sober, reasonable, competent, sharp and compassionate
> > moderate, you begin to envelop yourself in Keynesian verbigeration: you
> > start with, "as a Keynesian, I should say that ...", and then - to
> impress
> > upon the audience a comforting image of your expert and humane
> "knowledge" -
> > you go on dropping around abstruse nonsense such as "the liquidity trap"
> > and/or "the investment multiplier" and the incontournable "deficit
> > spending"."
> >
> > The objective of this standard psychical charade is to convey to those
> > around you that: 1) quite evidently you understand perfectly and
> technically
> > what is being discussed (when, in truth, you don't); and 2) most
> critically,
> > that you are a well-bred bourgeois who is possessed by no indecorous
> whim to
> > challenge authority, but that you nonetheless have always taken a deepest
> > and purest interest in the fate of the poor little folk - hence,
> > "keynesianally", you will always say that a little deficit-spending
> (plus a
> > tad of inflation) would surely relieve the wretched "charwoman". In this
> > regard, to play the game in proper fashion, you always need, opposite
> from
> > you, an obnoxious curmudgeon of the conservative Right, who's cued to
> bark
> > about the merits of toughness, competition and the naturally self -
> > regulating markets presently overburdened by the mad stupidity of the
> > "Socialists". Simply said, the Keynesian stance is confected to play
> "good
> > cop" when the economy falls on black days: the Keynesian is the leftist
> in
> > good-standing expected to deplore the avidity of bankers and to invoke
> the
> > sanative power of the state to redress the ravages of corporate abuse. It
> > sounds and looks "good", but it neither solves nor explains anything.
> >
> > As for Keynes the man, from what we know, he seems to have cut a pretty
> > despicable figure: arrogant, racist, a shameless thief of other people's
> > ideas, an exploiter of the underclass (for male prostitutes), and a
> > speculator. But more to the point, as a theorist, he was a total
> nullity: he
> > is the dottore of the commedia dell'arte, the pedantic character who
> knows
> > everything without understanding anything thereof.
> >
> > This man, who had been hailed by Time magazine in 1999 as one of the
> > towering gods of the 20th century, failed miserably to comprehend every
> > major event of his time: 1) Versailles, case in point; 2) Britain's
> return
> > to gold, which he denounced as the inane archaism that caused the Great
> > Strike of 1926 (it was neither the former nor did it cause the latter);
> 3)
> > the coming and severity of the Slump; and 4) the Nazi recovery. As for
> > Versailles, he did not have a clue as to what was being devised: he
> stormed
> > out of the conference moaning that Germany could not pay what was asked
> of
> > her, not intuiting, as Veblen did, that those astronomical sums were
> never
> > meant to be paid, but only, through the first series of "gold
> installments",
> > to burst the bubble of the German war debt.
> >
> > But then again, it was not his role to predict, intuit anything; he did
> > exactly what the commedia expected of him: a nice little Keynesian
> tantrum,
> > followed by a book that told the story (nowadays it would have come with
> a
> > bonus DVD ... ) ... And then in 1941 (if I remember correctly) to crown
> his
> > remarkable dramatic career he was made a director of the Bank of England;
> > yes, imagine him, gloatingly gabbing away at the very feet of the High
> > Priest, Montagu Norman ... That's Keynes, the great Keynes, the champion
> of
> > the enlightened middle-class ...
> >
> >
> > Guido Preparata
> >
> >
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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