Title inspiration

The regular readers of this blog (yes, there are some!) will notice the new look at the top of the page. It used to say, "William Polley's foray into the world of blogging." Since I've been at it a couple months now and have a pretty good set of entries to keep you reading, it's no longer a "foray." I'm here to stay.

The quote above was my inspiration for the title of my blog. It's one of my favorite Keynes quotes, and probably one of his best known. (Another well known quote of his is that "In the long run, we're all dead." But that doesn't make for a catchy blog title!)

The whole context of the quote is this.

But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Those words were written by a revolutionary. In his writing, I sense a lament over the present "madmen in authority" whose policies were guided by academic scribblers of years past. But the General Theory ends on a slightly more hopeful note.

Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Indeed. And so the General Theory did eventually get picked up by policy makers. Remember when Nixon said, "We are all Keynesians now."? (Well, I don't remember it, I was pretty young at the time.) Today, many would call Keynes himself a "defunct economist." Modern policymakers get their inspiration from academic scribblers like Lucas, Prescott, Krugman, and Mankiw just to name a few. Tomorrow's policymakers will get their inspiration from a new generation of academic scribblers. Some of them, no doubt, will be bloggers.

This blog will continue to comment on the current happenings of economics as well as the spectrum of policy from silly and frustrating to wise and profound. With your help, gentle reader, we can supply the voices in the air for tomorrow's madmen in authority.

Along the way, I promise to have a little fun. :)

If you're a regular reader, thanks. If you're new to the blog, welcome aboard!