Synopses & Reviews
The ideas of John Maynard Keynes have never been more timely. No one has bettered Keynes's description of the psychology of investors during a financial crisis: 'The practice of calmness and immobility, of certainty and security, suddenly breaks down. New fears and hopes will, without warning, take charge of human conduct... the market will be subject to waves of optimistic and pessimistic sentiment.'
Keynes's preeminent biographer, Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, brilliantly synthesizes from Keynes's career and life the aspects of his thinking that apply most directly to the world we currently live in. In so doing, Skidelsky shows that Keynes's mixture of pragmatism and realism - which distinguished his thinking from the neo-classical or Chicago school of economics that has been the dominant influence since the Thatcher-Reagan era and which made possible the raw market capitalism that created the current global financial crisis - is more pertinent and applicable than ever. Crucially Keynes offers nervous capitalists - and Keynes never wavered in his belief in the capitalist system - a positive answer to the question we now face: When unbridled capitalism falters, is there an alternative?
In the long run, as Keynes famously said, we are all dead. We may not have time to wait for the perfect theoretical operation of capital as the neo-classicists insist will happen eventually. In the meantime, we have Keynes: more supple, more human and more magnificently real than ever.
Review
Foreign Affairs “The book offers clear and cogent critiques of modern macroeconomic thought, along with a brief but useful summary of what went wrong in 2007-9.”
Review
Foreign Affairs “The book offers clear and cogent critiques of modern macroeconomic thought, along with a brief but useful summary of what went wrong in 2007-9.”
Financial Times, October 18, 2010“Skidelsky’s succinct, lively, unashamed paean analyses Keynes’s core values and offers a persuasive pitch for the contemporary relevance (and necessity) of his ideas.”
Synopsis
In the debris of the financial crash of 2008, the principles of John Maynard Keynesthat economic storms are a normal part of the market system, that governments need to step in and use fiscal ammunition to prevent these storms from becoming depressions, and that societies that value the pursuit of money should reprioritizeare more pertinent and applicable than ever. In Keynes: The Return of the Master, Robert Skidelsky brilliantly synthesizes Keynes career and life, and offers nervous capitalists a positive answer to the question we now face: When unbridled capitalism falters, is there an alternative?
About the Author
Robert Skidelsky is the Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. He is the author of The World After Communism (1995). He was made a life peer in 1991, and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.