Keynesian Economics - Again?

Just a good short overview of John Maynard Keynes' theories:

Keynesian Economics
by Alan S. Blinder

Keynesian economics is a theory of total spending in the economy (called aggregate demand) and of its effects on output and inflation. Although the term is used (and abused) to describe many things, six principal tenets seem central to Keynesianism. The first three describe how the economy works.


1. A Keynesian believes that aggregate demand is influenced by a host of economic decisions—both public and private—and sometimes behaves erratically. The public decisions include, most prominently, those on monetary and fiscal (i.e., spending and tax) policy. Some decades ago, economists heatedly debated the relative strengths of monetary and fiscal policy, with some Keynesians arguing that monetary policy is powerless, and some monetarists arguing that fiscal policy is powerless. Both of these are essentially dead issues today. Nearly all Keynesians and monetarists now believe that both fiscal and monetary policy affect aggregate demand. A few economists, however, believe in what is called debt neutrality—the doctrine that substitutions of government borrowing for taxes have no effects on total demand (more on this below). ...Article Continued