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Shockingly Entertaining: Friedrich Hayek Vs John Maynard Keynes Rap

12/20/09 Stockholm, Sweden – Russell Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University, argues for the Friedrich Hayek perspective, and against Keynesian government spending, in an episode of PBS NewsHour featured below. He directly counters the mainstream John Maynard Keynes viewpoint forwarded in this clip by Lord Robert Skidelsky, the author of a new book with the unfortunate title, “Keynes: The Return of the Master.”

Master…? Perhaps the master of deficit spending.

Here’s a highlight from the episode:

NewsHour Economics Correspondent Paul Solman: “Government has to protect the economy from itself, Keynes thought. But Roberts thinks markets, unprotected, do a better job.“

Russ Roberts: “What markets do is they punish you if you systematically make the same mistakes over and over again. When you destroy the punishment system that markets naturally perform you’re going to see more myopia, more hubris, more overconfidence.”

See the Keynes rap post at Naked Capitalism or view the video below.

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Rocky Vega is publisher of Agora Financial International, where he advances the growth of Agora Financial publishing enterprises outside of the US. Previously, he was publisher of The Daily Reckoning, and founding publisher of both UrbanTurf and RFID Update -- which he ran from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico -- as well as associate publisher of FierceFinance. Rocky has an honors MS from the Stockholm School of Economics and an honors BA from Harvard University, where he served on the board of directors for Let’s Go Publications, Harvard Student Agencies, and The Harvard Advocate.

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