[Pen-l] Keynsianism now the official ideology - and on a world scale

["Chris Burford" <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Suitably prepared to break gently on the news media in the UK yesterday, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling, anounced that John Maynard
Keynes was the greatest economist of the 20th century (some had apparently
forgotten).

Plus on the radio at lunchtime (I was travelling) Sir Digby Jones, was
available for a relaxed and comprehensive background interview about how
helpful the UK government's plans to spend its way out of the recession,
are - they just have to be productive investments, and they must come on
stream very quickly, even though longer term structural spending is also
valuable.

Oh, and it really needs underpinning by world discussions that cover greater
flexibility in the public sector borrowing requirement for individual
countries (like the UK? like the US?? -  he was presumably not thinking of
the Maldives, much as that might help their environmental challenges)

So now George Bush, flanked by Sarkozy, has announced through gritted teeth
an invitation to world leaders to the first of a series (note *series* of
meetings - will this become the "group of 23" or the "group of 5" for the
inner stakeholders?) the question I have in mind is how much common ground
could the Chinese find between the residues of Marxist thinking, and modern
neo-Keyesianism?

And are they content to remain the middle kingdom, to whom other countries
quietly come if they are wise, or are they going to accept a pivotal and
leading role in a new international economic order? Are they up to it?

The belt way has bust. The challenge is on to define a new ideological
hegemony on the global economy.

Any takes on how varieties of Keynesianism could fit in with Chinese
geopolitical perspectives? Any incompatibilities?

Chris Burford
London




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