Keynes in context

Professor and author Brad Bateman is a preeminent authority on the life and theories of influential British economist John Maynard Keynes.

Last fall, Brad Bateman, Denison’s provost and a professor of economics, and Roger Backhouse, an economic historian at the University of Birmingham in England, published an op-ed in the New York Times, calling out the folly of fellow economists, especially when it comes to their modern-day interpretations of theories advanced by figures such as John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman.

As co-authors of the new book, Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes, Bateman and Backhouse claim a particularly keen insight to the iconic economist. Recently, Brad was invited to talk with Ken Prewitt and Tom Keene, co-hosts of Surveillance, a morning program on Bloomberg Radio.

We have the audio of that conversation below, so if you’re able, take a few minutes (actually, just under nine) to learn about what we continue to get wrong about Keynes (he was neither anti-capitalist nor pro-stimulus), his thoughts on how to provide the most jobs for the most people, and how he would likely advise a struggling Europe today.