John Maynard Keynes has been restored to life. Rusty Keynesian tools – larger budget deficits, tax cuts, accelerated spending programmes and other “economic stimuli” – have been brought back into use the world over to cut off the slide into depression. And they will do the job, if not next year, the year after. But the first Keynesian revolution was not about a rescue operation. Its purpose was to explain how shipwreck might occur; in short, to provide a theoretical basis for better navigation and for steering in seas that were bound to be choppy. Yet, even while the rescue operation is going on, we need to look critically at the economic ...

In Defence of Globalisation