Lord Keynes! Wow. It's such an honor!

Indeed, sir!

Please just go, go right on through.

I'm gonna...

Woah, woah! Identification, please.

Hey-ek?

Hayek!

Like, um…high explosives!

High…high explosives?

We have a 1066, HQ.

I repeat, we have a 1066.

Copy that, Mike. Proceed.

What's 10-66? It was just an example of how to pronounce my name...

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Members of the Committee!

We are here today to consider the impact

of government spending on the economy.

We are fortunate to have two world-renowned economists to offer their testimony on the matter.

I see you took a detour down the road to serfdom.

Talk about the end of laissez-faire. Sheesh.

Well, shake it off, Freddie.

I’m not going to pull any punches in there.

I'm ready.

Are you?

Prepare for the Return of the Master.

John Maynard Keynes

FA Hayek

Round 2

Round 2.0

Same economists

Same beliefs

New microphones

New Mustaches...

Here we are... peace out! Great Recession

thanks to me, as you see, we’re not in a depression

Recovery, destiny if you follow my lesson

Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession

We brought out the shovels and we’re still in a ditch...

And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch...

From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.

The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!

Are you kidding? my cure works perfectly fine...

have a look, the Great Recession ended back in '09.

I deserve credit. Things would have been worse

All the estimates prove it—I’ll quote chapter and verse

Econometricians, they’re ever so pious

Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?

Their “Keynesian” models are tidy and neat

But that top down approach is a fatal conceit

Which way should we choose?

more bottom up or more top down

…the fight continues...

Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in...

more from the top or from the ground

...lets listen to the greats

Keynes and Hayek throwing down

We could have done better, had we only spent more

Too bad that only happens when there’s a World War

You can carp all you want about stats and regression

Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?

Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy

the Last time I checked, wars only destroy

There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank

As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity

Rationed meat, rationed butter... a life of austerity

When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster

yet the economy thrived and grew ever faster

You too only see what you want to see

The spending on war clearly goosed GDP

Unemployment was over, almost down to zero

That’s why I’m the master, that’s why I’m the hero

Creating employment’s a straightforward craft

When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft

If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet

We'd be at full employment with nothing to eat

Which way should we choose?

more bottom up or more top down

the fight continues...

Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in...more from the top or from ground

...lets listen to the greats

Keynes and Hayek throwing down

Jobs are the means, not the ends in themselves

People work to live better, to put food on the shelves

Real growth means production of what people demand

That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan

My solution is simple and easy to handle..

Its spending that matters, why’s that such a scandal?

The money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices

revitalizing the economy’s juices

It’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark

To bring it to life, we need a quick spark

Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going

Where it goes doesn’t matter, just get spending flowing

You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”

But some sectors are healthy, and some in a rut

So spending’s not free - that’s the heart of the matter

too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.

The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall

no expert can fix it, there’s no “it” at all.

The economy’s us, we don’t need a mechanic

Put away the wrenches, the economy’s organic.

Which way should we choose?

More bottom up or more top down

The fight continues...

Keynes and Hayek second round

It’s time to weigh in...

More from the top or from ground

...lets listen to the greats

Keynes and Hayek throwing down

So what would you do to help those unemployed?

This is the question you seem to avoid

When we’re in a mess, would you just have us wait?

Doing nothing until markets equil-i-brate?

I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do

The question I ponder is who plans for who?

Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?

I want plans by the many and not by the few.

Let's not repeat what created our troubles

I want real growth not just a series of bubbles

Let’s stop bailing out losers and let prices work

If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk

Come on, are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street’s gyrations

Challenge your world view of self-regulation?

Even you must admit that the lesson we’ve learned

Is more oversight’s needed or else we’ll get burned

Oversight? The government’s long been in bed

With the Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve bled

Capitalism’s about profit AND loss

When you bail out the losers there’s no end to the cost

The lesson I’ve learned? It’s how little we know.

The world is complex, not some circular flow.

The economy's not a class you can master in college

To think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge.

Which way should we choose?

More bottom up or more top down

The fight continues...

Keynes and Hayek’s second round

It’s time to weigh in...

More from the top or from ground

...lets listen to the greats

Keynes and Hayek throwing down

You get on your high horse and you’re off to the races

I look at the world on a case by case basis

When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves

And do what I can to cure our disease

The future's uncertain, our outlooks are frail

Thats why free markets are so prone to fail

In a volatile world we need more discretion

So state intervention can counter depression

People aren't chessmen you can move on a board

at your whim--their dreams and desires ignored

With political incentives, discretion's a joke

The dials you're twisting... are just mirrors and smoke

We need stable rules and real market prices

So prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis

Give us a chance, so we can discover

the most valuable ways to serve each other.

Which way should we choose?

More bottom up or more top down

The fight continues...

Keynes and Hayek’s second round

It’s time to weigh in...

More from the top or from ground

...lets listen to the greats

Keynes and Hayek throwing down