PKT message, On How To Read Keynes

In view of recent exchanges on PKT, the following may be of interest.

*******

In a message to Gang8 today, Geoffrey Gardiner made the point that:

One can, as Gunnar constantly proves, tease brilliant stuff from Keynes? writings but what rubbish one has to wade through.

To which I replied:

Agree - the collected works and papers of Keynes published by the Royal Economic Society run to 30 plus volumes.

I had access to them in what Professor Haberler rated as the best economics library around - the Joint IMF-World Bank Library.

But the trick with Keynes - as with Jeremy Bentham, who first gave a lucid presentation of Creditary Principles - is not to read him in search of enlightenment.

In this respect, it was my good fortune to have spent 10 years at the IMF, including 5 years in economic policy advisory capacity in Indonesia, the Khmer Republic, and South Viet-Nam from the time I completed the General Exam for the Ph. D. at Harvard till I returned my attention to theoretical economics in connection with my Ph. D. thesis work.

That is to say, I had developed a good instinct for distinguishing sense and nonsense in economics when I got into serious reading of Keynes.

Thus, my experience with reading Keynes accords with Isaac Stern's advice to young would-be violin-players: "Practice, practice, practice - and then, and only then, can you let your imagination take flight."

In my own case, my imagination was set to take flight when I began to study Keynes, permitting me to flip through and skip massive amounts of his writings which, at a glance, I judged not to be likely sources of insight into his monetary thinking along Creditary Lines.

Alas, my specific modus operandi in this respect is not an option for young would-be economic scholars because of the Publish-or-Perish mentality which governs their early progress en route to tenure several years down the road.

That, I submit, is the reason why Gang8 - a mix of talent of all sorts out to clear their own thinking rather than score debating points - has been able to make progress in the field of monetary economics, where conventional economic scholarship has been stuck in a rut for the past seven decades.

And, while all of us have healthy egos - with occasional friction - we have been able to place Cause above Ego.

That, Chris, is what I call the "vision" thing.

Gunnar