John Maynard Keynes lives (as if he ever died) - he has been reincarnated to the nth degree in Richard Koo, the politicians new savior.
The Great Depression brought us Keynes, rather it gave politicians a reason to spend as much money as they wanted. The new depression is about to bring us our modern day Keynes, a man named Koo. Richard Koo has a message for the world and it makes the Keynesian message seem dull and outdated, yet his message will change the world and he will soon be the politician's best friend in one last round of massive bubble stimulus. The Koo Coup is making its way to America and the message is, well, koo koo.
An article appeared today on The Big Picture blog - it attempted to skewer those politicians who have become deficit hawks by pointing out that they certainly didn't care about the deficit when they were in power. I'll give Mr. Ritholz credit (the blogger of Big Picture), he is absolutely right about all these politicians who freely spent our money and created massive deficits only to now find religion. But Mr. Ritholz takes it a step further, promoting the Keynesian...now Kooian idea of massive government spending to get us out of the depression. You can link to his article here. Now Mr. Ritholz doesn't exactly endorse the idea, but he isn't bringing it up so that you will forget about it.
We are beginning to see the rise of the "Koo Koo" and its dangerous. Many of you think our current crop of economists are a little coo-coo and of course they are - but the newest crop of economists will be the Koo-Koo's and they will be stars. Politicians will love them, the media will love them - and why wouldn't they? The Koo-Koo solution is really just the Ben Bernanke solution - drop money from helicopters to fund any and everything that moves.
Get ready for the Koo-Koo's, they are coming.
Scott Dauenhauer
