[Justin Fox's] The Comeback Keynes (Time, Oct. 2008) and Email from Robert Lucas

자료 1: The Comeback Keynes (Time, Oct. 23, 2008)

( ... ) Instead, what we are seeing now in Washington and other world capitals is fear we might be headed for an economic collapse caused by a collapse of demand caused by a collapse of credit. Confronted with that threat, governments seemingly cannot help turning to the remedy formulated by Keynes during the dark years of the early 1930s: stimulating demand by spending much more than they take in, preferably but not necessarily on useful public works like highways and schools. "I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole," jokes Robert Lucas, a University of Chicago economist who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for theories that criticized Keynes. ( ... )


자료 2: Bob Lucas on the comeback of Keynesianism (Oct. 28, 2008)

※ The same writer, Justin Fox, left a note at the above link:

I have a brief quote in my new column on the Keynes comeback from the University of Chicago’s Robert Lucas, who in 1980 declared Keynesianism not just dead but laughable (“At research seminars, people don’t take Keynesian theorizing seriously anymore; the audience starts to whisper and giggle to one another.”) and later won a Nobel for his efforts. Here’s his fuller response, from an e-mail:

Well I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole, but I don’t think we are there yet. Explicitly temporary tax cuts do nothing: people just bank them. Supply side tax cuts are fine with me, but they take time to work and at some point we need the revenue to run the government.

I feel the current situation requires a lender of last resort but not a fine tuner.