1 Keynesian orthodoxy 凯恩斯传统理论 2 monetary policy 货币政策,指一国中央银行对货币和信贷的调节管理政策。 3 easy money 低息贷款,银根松动 4 misinterpretation 曲解 5 Federal Reserve system 联邦储备系统
下面我们听一下弗里德曼教授对凯恩斯理论的不同看法:
In the first place the reason Keynesian orthodoxy came into so much favour was because of a widespread misinterpretation of the Great Depression. And it was widely interpreted as showing that monetary policy couldn't work. It was interpreted that way because of course all of the central bankers kept saying that they were engaged in very easy money and that the economy was declining in spite of them, their actions, and not because of their actions.
But we found that the situation was very different. Though in our opinion the Great Depression was not a sign of the failure of monetary policy as it was so interpreted, it was not a result of a failure of the market system as was widely interpreted, it was rather a consequence of a very serious government failure, a failure in the monetary authorities to do what they'd initially been set up to do.
1 the effect 作用,影响 2 intellectual community 知识界,学术界 3 cut tax 减税 4 government deficit 政府赤字 5 the House of Commons 议会下院
弗里德曼教授说:
The effect was primarily, I would say, after World War Two. The effect was to encourage politicians to do what politicians love to do - spend money and not raise taxes.
The Keynesian theory, not as Keynes himself necessarily presented it, but as it was interpreted both in the intellectual community and in the media and the press, said that if you have high unemployment, the way to solve that is to cut taxes and increase government spending - at least create a government deficit.
Now the government could have created the deficit entirely by cutting taxes and not increasing spending, but if you're sitting in the House of Commons in London or in Australia, or in the United States, obviously the thing you'd like to do is to increase spending.
And so the major effect of the Keynesian orthodoxy in the post-war period was to encourage an expansion in government spending as a fraction of income, and to contribute to the inflation of the 1970s.