Right vs left, Keynesian vs monetarist: Who's right?
"Wizard of Wharton" Jeremy Siegel says Keynesians understand what wrecked the economy - but monetarists know how to cure it
Penn stock-market scholar Jeremy Siegel, who markets himself as the "Wizard of Wharton," in his column today(carried here at Yahoo Finance) weighs the claims of liberal Keynesian economists vs. conservative monetarists and asks, Who caused the economic collapse? And who can fix it? Excerpts:
"Both the Keynesians and the monetarists are right. The Keynesian emphasis on unexpected fluctuations in spending did the best at explaining how we got into the crisis. But the Monetarists' claim that preserving the banking system is critical to prevent a recession from becoming a depression is also right.
"I am in no way absolving policymakers, particularly the Fed, who failed to see the crisis coming and protect the financial system.
"But we should be thankful that economic theory provided us a framework that prevented the last recession from turning into something much worse. The biggest winners are not the Keynesians nor the monetarists, but all of us counting on an economic recovery."
Sliced right down the middle. Guy should run for office. Or department chair.