EconAir

  A play about John Maynard Keynes recently opened in London. People are paying to see a play about an economist? I hope it’s a comedy. Or at least a musical like  Hamilton .   Keynes was born in England in 1883. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. His father was a professor at Cambridge. His mother was mayor of Cambridge in 1932-33. He died Lord Keynes in 1946. A member of the establishment.   He spent the first years of his professional life analyzing and writing about monetary theory and probability theory. This was in an environment in which the English economy was at the end of 100 years of political and economic dominance of the global economy (including English colonies) through advanced manufacturing technology, exports, and overseas capital investment. But already, by 1910, Germany and the United States had larger industrial output with better and more innovative technology (new industries and better manufacturing systems). England was falling behind. The...

Secretary of the Treasury UPDATE (10/2026) Some general background. Since 2000, the net government debt of America has tripled as a percent (share) of GDP. If the U.S. had to refinance (not reduce) all of its government debt at the current interest rate of a five-year bond, it would need higher taxes or spending cuts equal to 4.7% of GDP. That would cause a recession. Most of the U.S. national debt has to be refinanced in the next five years. Nobody believes yearly deficits will be eliminated or even reduced significantly. One reason is that interest expense is rising. The new (hopeful) goal is that government debt as a percent of GDP will fall over time. In other words, nominal GDP will grow faster than government debt. Possible but unlikely. Even to achieve a stable debt/GDP ratio, the government would have to run a "primary" budget surplus, that is, a budget surplus before interest expense. For the U.S., it would be about 1.0% of GDP (about $300 billion). Instead, the ...