PM to Ozone

I think you made a really dumb claim about Keynesian economics, the Marshall Plan, and somehow saying that the Marshall Plan somehow validated Keynesian economics.

I also think you are just deflecting now.
 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2013/05/30/keynes-answers-his-critics/

If you agree that "pump priming" is a Keynesian concept... and if you agree that the US made billions of dollars available to European countries for reconstruction and other activities since their economies were hugely depressed after the war... I'm not sure how you can say that the Marshall Plan was not Keynesian stimulus. It doesn't really matter that your Bond villain guy helped Germany re-structure its economy into a more-market-oriented version of mixed capitalism - that was going to happen and was very much part of the program (and again, I'm not anti-markets, so I think that was a good move as well).

Or you know, this guy, writing in Forbes (yes, Forbes is my source)

First, there was the Marshall Plan, which is unabashedly Keynesian in intent and scope. That vast stimulus program not only rebuilt Japan, Germany and the rest of Europe, it recast them as world-class industrial exporters. While neither country has a perfect economy today, they avoided the perils of the 2008 credit-fueled recession, even though they had piled up plenty of domestic debt.
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So there's a guy who must be an economic illiterate like me, writing in public that the Marshall Plan was Keynesian. He obviously didn't get the memo.

There's also this guy in Le Monde Diplomatique:http://mondediplo.com/1997/06/lead2

The Marshall Plan itself was profoundly influenced by the interventionist theory of economics espoused by John Maynard Keynes in his "General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money." Keynes had argued that governments ought now rely just on markets alone, but should do all in their power to secure full employment by achieving a better redistribution of income. The Marshall Plan also provided a way of gaining public acceptance in Europe for the New Deal format that the United States used successfully before the war to end the recession triggered by the 1929 Wall Street crash.
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FDR *and* Keynes?

LUDWIG VON MISES, TRUE?!?!?!?!!?!??

This guy puts it in comic-book format for dipshits like me who can't be expected to understand a nuanced subject like economics:https://markusgrass.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1945_keynesianismus_marshall_plan.pdf

And those are literally the first three hits on Google for "Marshall Plan Keynes." But yeah, keep hugging your dead German politician.
 
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What, the economist from Berkeley who according to you was right is now very wrong? He said the $$$ were pretty insignificant and the policy (which doesn't match Keynesian theory) was the reason for the turnaround. And a bunch of economists believe the same. And no, it was not a given that the Marshall Plan was freeing up the markets...for a period of time it did the exact opposite and things weren't better (they were kinda a mess if you actually go back and read about it). That was the brilliance of Ludwig Erhard (and U.S. General Lucius D. Clay)...they ignored orders and removed the price controls on a bunch of products.

I love your two new "sources":
1) a blogger with degrees in psychology and communications (not a Forbes magazine contributor) and Al Jazeera America guest who's famous works include "The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide", "The Green Company Resource Guide", "The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome" and "Keynes's Way to Wealth". And...

2) a Spanish socialist journalist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Ramonet)

The sad thing is you could actually learn something from this...instead its a facts be damned dig in your heels and trot any and everything out to try and prove yourself correct no matter what reality says. Its very Hondo...

Heck, read Brad DeLong's paper I linked to...I not a fan of all his stuff and I hadn't read it before but its a pretty good read. Or just keep spinning and speaking in clichés without having a clue about what you are talking about...I don't care really...
 
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What, the economist from Berkeley who according to you was right is now very wrong? He said the $$$ were pretty insignificant and the policy (which doesn't match Keynesian theory) was the reason for the turnaround. And a bunch of economists believe the same. And no, it was not a given that the Marshall Plan was freeing up the markets...for a period of time it did the exact opposite and things weren't better (they were kinda a mess if you actually go back and read about it). That was the brilliance of Ludwig Erhard (and U.S. General Lucius D. Clay)...they ignored orders and removed the price controls on a bunch of products.

I love your two new "sources":
1) a blogger with degrees in psychology and communications (not a Forbes magazine contributor) and Al Jazeera America guest who's famous works include "The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide", "The Green Company Resource Guide", "The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome" and "Keynes's Way to Wealth". And...

2) a Spanish socialist journalist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Ramonet)

The sad thing is you could actually learn something from this...instead its a facts be damned dig in your heels and trot any and everything out to try and prove yourself correct no matter what reality says. Its very Hondo...

Heck, read Brad DeLong's paper I linked to...I not a fan of all his stuff and I hadn't read it before but its a pretty good read. Or just keep spinning and speaking in clichés without having a clue about what you are talking about...I don't care really...
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Next time you link a source, I'll attack the background of the person you sourced. Oh wait, you've never provided a link.
 
I don't care if you attack the sources I cited. I only cited them because they were the first three links that popped up in the Google machine when I typed "Marshall Plan Keynes." Yell at Google, not me. It's not cherry-picking if you aren't picking.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=marshall+plan+keynes

I skimmed the DeLong article. My reading would indicate that he assumes a Keynesian construct for the whole thing. (DeLong is a Keynesian in good standing, so this is unsurprising.)

What DeLong says is that the Marshall Plan did more for the European economy than one would expect from the relative size of the stimulus, and proceeds to examine why that appears to have been the case. An implicit assumption is that stimulus (i.e. Keynesian economics) works.

"Marshall Plan aid of two and one-half percent of GDP goes a substantial way toward closing [the] excess demand gap." (at 46)
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So, basically, pump more cash into an economy which is sputtering because of poor demand, and demand increases as persons with more cash spend the money.

The basic concept is Keynesian. The economic impact of the Marshall Plan was disproportionate to the stimulus, but in a good way, which led DeLong to ask what other factors were present.

So, I need you to explain to me how the Marshall Plan was not really demand-side stimulus (even though the DeLong article you cite seems to think it was) or how demand-side stimulus is not Keynesian.

Keynes wouldn't have cared how the money was spent, whether you dropped it from a helicopter or (as in the actual Marshall Plan) mandated that governments match Marshall Plan aid dollar-for-dollar (or lira, franc, mark, whatever) to be spent on US-approved projects. Because, you know, in the long run we're all dead.

The fact that Colonel Klink helped re-vamp the West German economy and gave it a more free-market orientation is great, and I think it was very significant. But neither 1955 West Germany or 2015 unified Germany is terribly "free-market" by the standards of Anglo-Saxon observers. Their mix of state and private economic actors is much more "statist" than is ours or England's.

Government spending to stimulate demand = Keynes

The Marshall Plan spent US Government money to stimulate demand in Europe (and also help them reform their economies and keep them on our side of the Iron Curtain).

Win-win-win.

It was awesome.
 
What, the economist from Berkeley who according to you was right is now very wrong? He said the $$$ were pretty insignificant and the policy (which doesn't match Keynesian theory) was the reason for the turnaround. And a bunch of economists believe the same. And no, it was not a given that the Marshall Plan was freeing up the markets...for a period of time it did the exact opposite and things weren't better (they were kinda a mess if you actually go back and read about it). That was the brilliance of Ludwig Erhard (and U.S. General Lucius D. Clay)...they ignored orders and removed the price controls on a bunch of products.

I love your two new "sources":
1) a blogger with degrees in psychology and communications (not a Forbes magazine contributor) and Al Jazeera America guest who's famous works include "The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide", "The Green Company Resource Guide", "The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome" and "Keynes's Way to Wealth". And...

2) a Spanish socialist journalist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Ramonet)

The sad thing is you could actually learn something from this...instead its a facts be damned dig in your heels and trot any and everything out to try and prove yourself correct no matter what reality says. Its very Hondo...

Heck, read Brad DeLong's paper I linked to...I not a fan of all his stuff and I hadn't read it before but its a pretty good read. Or just keep spinning and speaking in clichés without having a clue about what you are talking about...I don't care really...
Click to expand...

Next time you link a source, I'll attack the background of the person you sourced. Oh wait, you've never provided a link.
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From earlier in this thread...http://www.nber.org/papers/w3899http://www.amazon.com/The-Commanding-Heights-Battle-Economy/dp/068483569Xhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/

Shite or get off the pot you effin moron...
 
this is a message bored. Quote or something. If your quote is interesting, maybe I'll look at the source. I looked at the DeLong article, and I don't think it supports your point (that the Marshall Plan is not Keynesian)

A link to a book on Amazon and a link to a webpage promoting a TV show are not information. Part of debate is making your point of view and sources comprehensible. Thus far you are failing.
 
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In short, DeLong says its not Keynesian in that the spending was not critical to the economic development (in fact he pointed out most of the infrastructure rebuilding happened before the Marshall Plan). He didn't say Keynesian is right or wrong (he's a Liberal and pretty Keynesian which makes this entire thread pretty funny in that even his work directly contradicts you)...he said in the paper at least the turnaround and development in the economy was due to moving out of govt controls (price controls and many other govt-controlled mechanisms in the economy) and into a much more market-based system. That is completely opposite of Keynesian...i.e. reducing govt control over the economy (in a pretty rough stretch of the economy in Germany at the time) instead of having the govt step in and control the swings of boom/bust via spending. You can get into the pricing aspect as well, but I'll leave that be for now...

You can argue its not binary and the Marshall Plan doesn't completely disprove Keynesian theory and I won't disagree, but is FS to say the Marshall Plan is somehow based in and validates Keynesian theory...i.e. back to my original post.
 
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this is a message bored. Quote or something. If your quote is interesting, maybe I'll look at the source. I looked at the DeLong article, and I don't think it supports your point (that the Marshall Plan is not Keynesian)

A link to a book on Amazon and a link to a webpage promoting a TV show are not information. Part of debate is making your point of view and sources comprehensible. Thus far you are failing.
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I guess I should stick to quotes from socialist journalists and psychologists when talking economic policy and not use academic papers from actual economists and standard MBA reference material. Makes sense...

banghead.gif


I'll stick to the abstract for the DeLong paper...I guess its short enough for you to (not) comprehend?

"The post-World War II reconstruction of Western Europe was one of the greatest economic policy and foreign policy successes of this century. "Folk wisdom" assigns a major role in successful reconstruction to the Marshall Plan: the program that transferred some $13 billion to Europe in the years 1948-51. We examine the economic effects of the Marshall Plan, and find that it was not large enough to have significantly accelerated recovery by financing investment, aiding the reconstruction of damaged infrastructure, or easing commodity bottlenecks. We argue, however, that the Marshall Plan did play a major role in setting the stage for post-World War II Western Europe's rapid growth. The conditions attached to Marshall Plan aid pushed European political economy in a direction that left its post World War II "mixed economies" with more "market" and less "controls" in the mix. "

 
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No wonder you don't understand macro, if you're an MBA.

Keynes absolutely DNGAF about "controls" in an economy. His big idea was smoothing out the market cycle by using government spending to stimulate aggregate demand.

The Marshall Plan stimulated aggregate demand, in part, via government spending from the US, which was matched by the Euro governments. It worked better than the modeling would suggest, and in part due to reduction of controls and so forth.

But the Keynesianism already happened before that.

If you want to say that demand wasn't stimulated as much by the spending but rather by the loosening of regulations and administrative control by governments, that's fine. Just so long as you understand that the basic idea behind demand stimulus is Keynesian.

Anytime a government engages in countercyclical spending to stimulate aggregate demand, they are following Keynes. The Marshall Plan did just that. That is all.
 
MBA was a side project...better than a psychology degree or being a socialist journalist...you know...where you apparently get your economic understanding.

DeLong said the spending was inconsequential...along with many others economists. Simple fact. The driving force behind the effectiveness of the Marshall Plan was having the govt reduce control over the economy and letting prices and such move sharply to viable points...doesn't match up or validate Keynesian theory of govt activism and price rigidity in the face of economic troubles (you know...your original FS claim). Simple fact.

Keep spinning...maybe you can find a transgendered chef to quote economic theory next?
 
What, the economist from Berkeley who according to you was right is now very wrong? He said the $$$ were pretty insignificant and the policy (which doesn't match Keynesian theory) was the reason for the turnaround. And a bunch of economists believe the same. And no, it was not a given that the Marshall Plan was freeing up the markets...for a period of time it did the exact opposite and things weren't better (they were kinda a mess if you actually go back and read about it). That was the brilliance of Ludwig Erhard (and U.S. General Lucius D. Clay)...they ignored orders and removed the price controls on a bunch of products.

I love your two new "sources":
1) a blogger with degrees in psychology and communications (not a Forbes magazine contributor) and Al Jazeera America guest who's famous works include "The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide", "The Green Company Resource Guide", "The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome" and "Keynes's Way to Wealth". And...

2) a Spanish socialist journalist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Ramonet)

The sad thing is you could actually learn something from this...instead its a facts be damned dig in your heels and trot any and everything out to try and prove yourself correct no matter what reality says. Its very Hondo...

Heck, read Brad DeLong's paper I linked to...I not a fan of all his stuff and I hadn't read it before but its a pretty good read. Or just keep spinning and speaking in clichés without having a clue about what you are talking about...I don't care really...
Click to expand...

Next time you link a source, I'll attack the background of the person you sourced. Oh wait, you've never provided a link.
Click to expand...

From earlier in this thread...http://www.nber.org/papers/w3899http://www.amazon.com/The-Commanding-Heights-Battle-Economy/dp/068483569Xhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/

Shite or get off the pot you effin moron...
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nber is your source? FML
 
I don't understand anything in this entire thread but I have a hard on. Weird.
 
"not large enough to have significantly accelerated recovery" =/= "inconsequential"

No wonder you don't understand macro, if you're an MBA.

Keynes absolutely DNGAF about "controls" in an economy. His big idea was smoothing out the market cycle by using government spending to stimulate aggregate demand.

The Marshall Plan stimulated aggregate demand, in part, via government spending from the US, which was matched by the Euro governments. It worked better than the modeling would suggest, and in part due to reduction of controls and so forth.

But the Keynesianism already happened before that.

If you want to say that demand wasn't stimulated as much by the spending but rather by the loosening of regulations and administrative control by governments, that's fine. Just so long as you understand that the basic idea behind demand stimulus is Keynesian.

Anytime a government engages in countercyclical spending to stimulate aggregate demand, they are following Keynes. The Marshall Plan did just that. That is all.
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Are we done here or do you want to keep going?
 
We were done here last page when you cited DeLong who wrote a paper saying your claim was FS. You've just been spinning your wheels since.
 
LOL, no.

You spun his words into "inconsequential" when he never said that. His paper presupposes that government spending will increase aggregate demand, which he does not address specifically because that is Econ 101.

But whatever makes you feel all warm and snuggly at night
 
Arizona and Houston are close enough you two could drive for five-six hours each to meet in the middle and fuck.
 
Inconsequential, or if you want to be more specific, "not large enough to significantly". Or, as the authors later say, "negligible importance"...and this is your Liberal Keynesian economist I'm quoting. I can find worse if it makes you feel better.

Keep going all Hondo...
 
Inconsequential, or if you want to be more specific, "not large enough to significantly". Or, as the authors later say, "negligible importance"...and this is your Liberal Keynesian economist I'm quoting. I can find worse if it makes you feel better.

Keep going all Hondo...
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englishmotherfucker.gif

Also, TWSS!!!

huh?
 
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