Quote of the moment: Gold standard a “barbarous relic” – Keynes

Portrait of John Maynard Keynes as a younger man (who is the artist? where does it hang?)

• In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.
  • John Maynard Keynes, Monetary Reform (1924), p. 172

  Did Keynes foresee the rise of Ron Paul, even in 1924?

  

More, resources:

• Economist Brad DeLong explains why the U.S. cannot go back on the gold standard
• Nouriel Roubini:  “Supporters of a Gold Standard are Lunatics and Hacks”

“Fear the Boom and Bust,” Hayek vs. Keynes, a rap-off

NPR’s Morning Edition featured profiles of three figures in American economics this week, Ayn Rand, Friedrich von Hayek, and John Maynard Keynes.

The Keynes piece featured excerpts of the YouTube video below — so I’m reposting my original post of the rap from a year and a half ago.  It’s salient now, more than it was then.  However, a post at the blog of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) suggests Keynes’s legacy is much greater than this series lets on.  What do you think, Dear Reader?

This is really good.

It’s a pretty good rundown of the fight between Keynes and Hayek, conducted mostly after Keynes’ death in economics classrooms and central banks world wide.

Watch it, and hope for more soon, at Econstories, the blog of the guys who created the thing, John Papola and Russ Roberts.

Resources:

• NPR story on the rap song and video
• PlanetMoney story on the video
• Roberts’ blog, Cafe Hayek
• Roberts’ podcast, EconTalk (at the Library of  Economics and Liberty from the Liberty Fund)
• Economics as a Coordination Problem: The Contributions of Friedrich A. Hayek. by Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., at the Library of Economics and Liberty; a discussion of the Keynes vs. Hayek issues
• Online Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (CEE) biographies, of Keynes, and of Hayek