Stiglitz on Reason and Evidence
“We are all Keynesians now. Even the right in the United States has joined the Keynesian camp with unbridled enthusiasm and on a scale that at one time would have been truly unimaginable.
For those of us who always claimed some connection to the Keynesian tradition, this is a moment of triumph, after having been left in the wilderness, almost shunned, for more than three decades. At one level, what is happening now is a triumph of reason and evidence over ideology and interests.”
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December 5th, 2008 @ 10:46 pm
Stiglitz’s closing paragraph from “The Guardian” is worth quoting in full:
“A decade ago, at the time of the Asian financial crisis, there was much discussion of the need to reform the global financial architecture. Little was done. It is imperative that we not just respond adequately to the current crisis, but that we undertake the long-run reforms that will be necessary if we are to create a more stable, more prosperous and equitable global economy.”
Unlike many of the commentators, Stiglitz is recognising that there was a really important international dimension to what Keynes was about. He favoured international coordination of economic policies (such as stimulatory fiscal or monetary policy), and international economic institutions like those he helped to create at Bretton Woods (and would probably want to see reformed today), and for most of his life favoured free trade, including to promote peace.
All this is very important today – as is US leadership in international economic cooperation to achieve the “more stable, more prosperous and equitable global economy” that Stiglitz talks about, and which is very much in the tradition of Keynes.
Keynes’s thinking on these international issues is set out in Markwell’s book on “Keynes and international relations: economic paths to war and peace” – a subtitle which shows how big Keynes thought the stakes were in international economic issues!