张维迎写了一新闻炒作的《彻底埋葬凯恩斯主义》。要彻底埋葬凯恩斯？张维迎连一丝一毫的本事也没有。

这种题目是没有任何宏观经济学教养的狂吼。只有没有任何人文素质和教养的经济学学生才写这样的标语口号。

从1936年凯恩斯发表《通论》以来，凯恩斯奠定了现在宏观经济学的科学基础和基本名词概念。无论是赞成凯恩斯，还是反对凯恩斯，我们有了共同讨论的理论框架。弗里德曼的永久收入假说也是建立在修正了的凯恩斯的边际消费倾向之上。弗里德曼的货币论也只是纠正凯恩斯对财政政策的过分强调。弗里德曼没有非理性到要去彻底埋葬凯恩斯的消费理论，投资理论，预期理论。。。。。。哈耶克跟凯恩斯斗争了一辈子，他根本没有太多的宏观理论建树和实践理性去实现他埋葬凯恩斯的梦想。1965年，弗里德曼也不得不承认，我们现在都是凯恩斯主义者了。在今天，全世界都在以实践理性救市，救银行，救企业，遑论埋葬凯恩斯！

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

—The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Concluding his most important book with those words in 1935, John Maynard Keynes was confident that he had laid down a philosophy that would move and change men's affairs. Today, some 20 years after his death, his theories are a prime influence on the world's free economies, especially on America's, the richest and most expansionist. In Washington the men who formulate the nation's economic policies have used Keynesian principles not only to avoid the violent cycles of prewar days but to produce a phenomenal economic growth and to achieve remarkably stable prices. In 1965 they skillfully applied Keynes's ideas—together with a number of their own invention—to lift the nation through the fifth, and best, consecutive year of the most sizable, prolonged and widely distributed prosperity in history.

By growing 5% in real terms, the U.S. experienced a sharper expansion than any other major nation. Even the most optimistic forecasts for 1965 turned out to be too low. The gross national product leaped from $628 billion to $672 billion—$14 billion more than the President's economists had expected. Among the other new records: auto production rose 22% , steel production 6% , capital spending 16% , personal income 7% and corporate profits 21%. Figuring that the U.S. had somehow discovered the secret of steady, stable, noninflationary growth, the leaders of many countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain openly tried to emulate its success.

Basically, Washington's economic managers scaled these heights by their adherence to Keynes's central theme: the modern capitalist economy does not automatically work at top efficiency, but can be raised to that level by the intervention and influence of the government. Keynes was the first to demonstrate convincingly that government has not only the ability but the responsibility to use its powers to increase production, incomes and jobs. Moreover, he argued that government can do this without violating freedom or restraining competition. It can, he said, achieve calculated prosperity by manipulating three main tools: tax policy, credit policy and budget policy. Their use would have the effect of strengthening private spending, investment and production.

From Mischief to Orthodoxy. When Keynes first propagated his theories, many people considered them to be bizarre or slightly subversive, and Keynes himself to be little but a left-wing mischief maker. Now Keynes and his ideas, though they still make some people nervous, have been so widely accepted that they constitute both the new orthodoxy in the universities and the touchstone of economic management in Washington. They have led to a greater degree of government involvement in the nation's economy than ever before in time of general peace. Says Budget Director Charles L. Schultze: "We can't prevent every little wiggle in the economic cycle, but we now can prevent a major

We're All Keynesians Again

By GEORGE MELLOAN

In 1935, six years after the 1929 Crash, the U.S. remained mired in the Great Depression -- as it would be for five years more. At a congressional hearing, then Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles told Rep. Thomas Alan Goldsborough (D., Md.) that there was very little the Fed could do beyond what it was already doing to pull the country out of the doldrums.

"You mean you cannot push on a string," said the congressman.

AP

"That is a very good way to put it," replied Mr. Eccles. "One cannot push on a string. We are in the depths of a Depression and beyond creating an easy money situation through reduction of discount rates, there is very little, if anything, that the reserve organization can do to bring about recovery."

The Fed is in that position once again. With a federal-funds interest-rate target near zero, the Fed has pumped tons of newly created dollars into the economy over the last four months. This has doubled the monetary base (bank reserves and currency), a phenomenal increase that has shocked market watchers and raised fears of inflation. But all economic indicators are flashing recession.

Last week brought the dispiriting news that the U.S. suffered a net loss of 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since 1945. Now 7.2% of the work force is idle. New factory orders, housing construction and retail sales have shriveled. Mortgage foreclosures are rising.

Between 2002 and the fall of 2007, funds raised in U.S. credit markets nearly doubled. Talk about a credit explosion! Easy money, much beloved by politicians and Wall Street, is a sure recipe for an asset bubble.

So the Fed is again in the position of "pushing on a string" and finding that nothing happens. Some economists describe this as a "liquidity trap." Money creation loses its stimulative power -- vastly overrated even in ordinary times -- because public demand for loans is weak. Americans are too strapped financially, too short on investment opportunities, or too concerned about the future to borrow. They prefer to save instead.

Some economists argue that "trap" is an inappropriate description. The new money the Fed has pumped into the economy to replace the financial-sector liquidity wiped out by the collapse of the bubble has to go somewhere, they point out. It has to end up in someone's bank account and banks have to quickly convert deposits (liabilities) into investments or go broke even faster than some have by loading up on polluted, mortgage-backed securities. Maybe "liquidity malfunction" is a better term than "trap."

With 30-year mortgage rates now hovering near 5%, banks are spending a lot more of their time and resources responding to householder demands for refinancing at the lower rates. That doesn't do much for bank profits, but it does improve household balance sheets, cushioning to some degree the impact of the recession.

But what the Fed has mainly been doing since Black September has been transferring economic resources to government from the private sector on a massive scale. There is one thing the banks can do with their deposits if they can't find willing and qualified borrowers -- the word "qualified" was rather neglected when Fannie and Freddie stood ready to buy any cats and dogs offered. They can put those deposits into U.S. Treasury securities.

Banks and investors around the world fleeing for safety have been doing just that, holding down federal borrowing costs, at least temporarily. The global flight for the presumed safety of Treasurys has also shored up the U.S. dollar in foreign-exchange markets, sending crude oil prices plunging. Because of the Treasury mania, 30-year Treasury bonds were yielding only 3.06% and the popular 10-year bond 2.39%.

So the Treasury has a good deal. The Fed pumps money into the economy by buying Treasurys with checks written on thin air. The Treasury quickly spends those dollars on the huge ongoing expenses of a government running a trillion-dollar deficit. Recipients of its spending put the money into bank accounts and, presto, the money comes right back to the Treasury to finance yet more government spending.

The government is thus the main beneficiary of the phenomenal rise in the monetary base. The base remained relatively stable through the ups and downs of Fed interest-rate policies in this decade, until it went on its fourth-quarter skyrocket trip. For what it's worth, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, a student of the 1929 crash, has at least made sure that no one in the future will be able to accuse him of starving the economy into a Depression, as conventional wisdom has held that the Fed did 80 years ago.

Keynesians were banished in the 1980s by Reaganomics but made a comeback years ago and again control U.S. levers of power. They argue that massive deficit spending by the federal government is the right policy for these times. Paul Krugman of the New York Times has asserted that the Great Depression lasted 10 years because the New Deal didn't spend enough. Japan tried to spend its way out of its postbubble malaise in the 1990s but ended up with a mountain of debt and a "lost decade" of little or no economic growth. Nevertheless, the incoming Obama administration is promising close to a trillion dollars in fiscal stimulus, and the Bernanke Fed seems to believe the way to deal with a collapsed bubble is to reinflate it. That of course takes no account of how we got the bubble in the first place.

Well, there's a lot of high-powered money out there in the huge monetary base the Fed has created. It's at the Treasury's disposal. All that can be said to the Keynesians is, "better luck than last time."

Mr. Melloan is a former deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page.