Quote from mccd:
I think that people here have a somewhat backwards understanding of Keynes.
The only thing that has died recently is Friedman's monetarism which, despite what some of the self-styled libertarians may assume, calls for the extreme expansion of the money supply right now (Friedman thought that aggressive easing would have avoided the great depression). Bernanke has followed his and Shwartz's advice and it has clearly failed.
Keynes saw only a minor role in monetary easing (hence why the monetarists disagreed with him) and instead argued in favor of fiscal stimulus. History has proven that fiscal stmulus is the best way of fighting a depression. Germany and Japan pursued fiscal stimulus in the early thirties and came out of the depression far earlier than anyone else, and strong enough to almost take over the world. Japan in the 90s pursued monetarist policies (attempt to reinflate the money supply with negative real interest rates) and failed. The USA is now in the same position. Keynes foresaw this failure and called it the liquidity trap.
So, despite what Murray Rothbard or whoever you read might try to tell you, Keynesians are not into printing money - they are into deficit spending - two very different things.
There are basically 3 ways to approach the current problem:
1) Monetarist - print money like there is no tomorrow, re-inflate asset values as quickly as possible
2) Keynesian- deficit spending to raise employment and sustain aggregate demand
3) Austrian - liquidate bad debts, allow insolvent institutions to fail, reduce the overall debt-load and start over from a sound base.
While the Austrian solution sounds good in theory, the danger is that once you willingly start a deflationary spiral, it is very hard to stop, and no one knows where it will end. Starting from a sound foundation might not seem so appealing when that foundation looks like something out of Mad Max.
1.) Moneterists - A re-inflation of an asset bubble will only happen if the deflation is a result of an asset bubble in the first place. That was not the case during the 20's. The stock market got a bit overvalued, but the crash did not cause the deflation.
Around the time of the crash the central bank was involved in a process called "sterilization". That is, it was not allowing the gold standard to function the way it should. This caused a very pronounced tightening of the money supply - one that the modest rate cuts the Fed employed after the crash couldn't overcome.
An overly tight money supply was not the problem in the last few years. Indeed, a very large money supply (expressed in loose lending) was the problem.
Don't blame this on Schwartz. She publicly criticized Bernanke in the WSJ for "fighting the last war".
2.) Keynes - The state creates demand but the state doesn't produce anything. Since a fundamental law of economics is that, in the long run, one can only consume as much as one produces, this model doesn't work. What it does to is saddle the economy with an enormous amount of debt which is merely another way of saying "raises taxes on future production".
Keynes' deficit spending also crowds out private investment, making the task of repaying the loans virtually impossible. Keynsian economic shenanigans extended the Great Depression and buried the economies of countries that employ his machinations.
3.) Austrian - isn't it interesting that every single depression before the Great Depression (which was the first time Keynes' central planning was tried) righted itself without that horrid deflationary death spiral you're talking about.
The liquidity trap is a scare tactic. Nothing more. Assets must fall to a price where equilibrium is reached. Keynes merely argues that government should employ central planning to force an outcome it, in reality, has no power to force.
Hubris.