Steve Saville writes ……Governments and central banks have invoked the writings of J.M. Keynes to justify the massive increases in government spending and monetary inflation that have occurred over the past 9 years. However, some of Keynes’s apologists have pointed out that the famous British economist would not have agreed with many of the policy responses for which his work has provided the intellectual justification. They point out, for example, that Keynes only advocated temporary increases in government spending as a means of absorbing shocks to the economy, and that he was dead against currency debasement and the creation of structural deficits. The problem, though, isn’t that Keynes’s theory has been applied to an unreasonable extreme; the problem is that the theory is completely wrong.
For starters, the laws of economics always apply, so if greater government deficit-spending really did act to strengthen the economy during recessions then it would also act to strengthen the economy during the good times. On the other hand, if greater government deficit-spending hurt the economy during the good times then it would also hurt the economy during recessions. The point is that there isn’t one set of laws that applies during periods of growth and another set that applies during periods of contraction.