Old Interview: Volker on Keynsian vs Austrian economics

[thegoldview]

Fascinating interview. Especially when Volcker talks about when he was at Harvard watching these young economists obsessed with Keynesian economics believing they could push the right buttons to make the economy work. Great quote "I was a little bit turned off by the precision and certainty that these people attached to the doctrine. The analytic framework was very convincing, but this feeling they had, that they could press the right buttons and manage the economy pretty exactly, for some reason it turned me off."

Paul Volcker Interview

 

[hugolp]

This interviews are gold:

[Keynesianism] really hadn't permeated fully the political decision-making [process]. It hadn't reached its apogee, which it certainly reached in the Kennedy-Johnson days, and they felt they'd solved the problem in the business cycle. They'd solved a problem with macroeconomics; it was time to turn to other microeconomic things, [and] it was time to turn to welfare questions, because they'd solved the problem. I'm not exaggerating very much when I say that.

LOL

Keynesianism has failed miserably but they certainly retain the same arrogant and elitist attitude.