From: andie nachgeborenen [mailto:andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 1:55 PM
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [PEN-L] Never Walk Alone
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"Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx> wrote:
In Thursday's NY TIMES column, Hal Varian quoted Keynes as saying "you can't push on a string." Who _really_ said it?
Varian says it means that "you can give people more dollars, but you can't make them spend them." As I understand it, it's a reference solely to monetary policy: what it really means is that the central bank can increase bank reserves, but it can't make them lend them -- and it can't make the non-bank public want to borrow them.
Someone (who?) also said "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" to say the same thing.
While we're on the subject, who was it who originally referred to the government "priming the pump" to get an economy out of depression?
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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