A Plague of Economists

What do economists think about Keynesian ideas, such as deficit spending in the midst of a great depression? Oliver Staley and Michael McKee report, "[James] Tobin's stamp is on the $787 billion stimulus signed by President Barack Obama, former students and colleagues say. His philosophies are influencing Austan Goolsbee, a former Tobin student advising Obama, and Ben S. Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve. Unlike Friedman, Tobin provides guidance for today’s problems, said Paul Krugman, a Princeton University economist." Furthermore, "Bernanke cited Tobin’s 1969 essay on monetary theory in a 2004 paper discussing options available to the Federal Reserve for stimulating the economy when interest rates approach zero."

So economists are for it.

On the other hand, Will Wilkinson interviews Edward Prescott and Edmund Phelps. The idiot savant Edward Prescott says, "Stimulus is not part of the language of economics... There is an old, discarded theory that's been tried and failed spectacularly, which is where that language of stimulus comes from".

So economists are against it.