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The phenomenon of recessions puzzled many economists in the early years of this century, and led many of them produce their worst work. Thorstein Veblen went from his brilliant Theory of the Leisure Class to write a really terrible book purporting to explain economic slumps. Joseph Schumpeter, whose magnificent vision of the "creative destruction" inherent in capitalist growth continues to inspire many economists, wrote a turgid, almost meaningless two-volume study, Business Cycles. Marxists gleefully seized upon the biggest recession of all, the Great Depression of the 1930s, as evidence of the irrationality of capitalism; yet they never offered a good explanation of why and how such things happen, just assurances that socialism would cure them.
It fells to the British economist John Maynard Keynes to provide a clear story about what happens during a recession, and some useful advice about how to get out of one. (en) |
