Keynes on the US Bankbailouts

Here are some thoughts — via Keynes — on liquidity, uncertainty, and valuation for (hopefully!) a chapter in an edited collection on Sub-Prime and the Political Economy of Global Finance.  The text is an updated version of a paper presented at the International Studies Convention in New York in February 2009.

It’s a first stab at restoring a Keynesian (or rather a Post-Keynesian) approach.  Hopefully this is the first of a number of such attempts.  This one focuses on the recent attempts by the US Treasury to restore financial health.  The argument is that by reducing the problem of uncertainty to a technical problem rather than a persistent condition of life and the economy (a la Keynes and Jacqueline Best), the bank bailouts will re-institutionalise the fetish of liquidity, reduce investment elsewhere  and continue the naive belief in market rationality.

Click here for a copy of the paper.

As always, comments are very very welcome.

Reflections on the Global Financial Crisis

In the middle of January I took part in a rountable on the financial crisis with the brilliant Professor Donald MacKenzie and the excellent Dr Iain Hardie.  Details of the roundtable are here.

It was the first opportunity to present some of the research I have been doing (increasingly obsessively) on what John Maynard Keynes’s work has to offer us for understanding and responding to the current financial crisis and economic downturn.  Much, I would argue.  And not just in terms of the case for fiscal stimulus.  In fact this may well be the least interesting part of the puzzle.  For me, the issues of uncertainty and international monetary reform are potentially far more important.  These themes will be revisited and hopefully improved for a talk at UCL with the to the Commonwealth Secretariat and in New York for the International Studies Convention in February.