Product Description

Today, Mr. Minsky's view [of economics] is more relevant than ever.”-Jeff Madrick, New York Times

Published in 1936, John Maynard Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money revolutionized economics. John Maynard Keynes is Minsky's influential reinterpretation of the Keynesian revolution that casts uncertainty, risk, and financial markets as the drivers of boom and bust cyles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18624 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 181 pages

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Hyman P. Minsky, Ph.D., was the first to explain how uncertainty, risk, and financial markets drive the economy. He was a distinguished scholar at The Levy Economics Institute of Bard college, and taught at Washington University for 25 years.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant study of Keynes
This excellent book examines John Maynard Keynes' key work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, published in 1936, seven years into the Great Depression, when one in seven US workers was still out of work.

Keynes' thinking largely broke free of the conventional wisdom, that wrecking the trade unions would make the market work again. But he didn't leave behind all conventional free trade thinking.

Minsky writes, "the missing step in the standard Keynesian theory was the explicit consideration of capitalist finance within a cyclical and speculative context." Minsky shows that private investment is the constant source of speculation, instability, slumps and mass unemployment.

Minsky shows the conflict at the centre of capitalism: "the boom is critical; it builds an ever-more-demanding liability structure on the base of a cash-flow foundation consisting of the prospective yields of capital assets, which are, because of technology and the limited ability to squeeze workers' real wages, at best constrained ultimately to grow at a steady rate in real terms. The debt base, which grows at an accelerating rate during a boom, is not so constrained. Thus, debts require increased servicing as they grow and as financing charges increase."

He observes, "In Keynes' own view his theory implied that the existing order should be replaced by a much more egalitarian economy, based upon a dominance of social control over investment. As the private, profit-motivated decisions to invest cannot guarantee a reasonable approximation to full employment, `a somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment' (GT, p. 378) will prove necessary." But Keynes breezed over the politics needed to do this. How could we socialise investment without taking power from the capitalist class?

Minsky notes, "Keynes also believed that `if nations can learn to provide themselves with full employment by their domestic policy ... there need be no important economic forces calculated to set the interest of one country against that of its neighbours.'" But if capitalism could do this, it wouldn't be capitalism. Capitalist economies are basically flawed - unstable and unequal, unworkable and unjust.

Brilliant but very technical
An excellent book, but rather than focussing on Keynes or his work as such, its more about the Keynesian Revolution and how despite its much vanted triumph in the 1940s and 50s, it was actually still born. That at least is the opinion of the author and other post Keynesian economists like Joan Robinson and Paul Davison. Minsky makes his case very well. However this is a very technical book, making heavy use of calculus and dense argument. I dont reccomend it to the general reader unless they are very good at math - there are many other books showing the relevance of Keynes work to our current circumstances more simply, such as Davidsons 'The Keynes Solution' or Lord Skidelskys 'Keynes: the return of the master'.

Maynard Keynes: an economist's view of his work
Hyman P. Minsky was one of the few economists to keep the faith with Maynard Keynes's insight and explanation as to how the capitalist system works imperfectly - and how government intervention is necessary. The late Professor Minsky is honoured with the coinage " the Minsky moment" which, so momentuously illustrated in October 2008, encapsulates his hypothesis that stability in the financial system will inevitably give way to instability - in other words, be eternally vigilant, economic good times will, at some point, come to an end. His book on Maynard Keynes is sometimes very technical, but repays reading for his penetrating and sometimes critical study of Keynes's contribution to economic policy making.