I believe that was in the original and I don’t know how that happened. I will ask the editor to do a fix.
Thanks for calling this to our attention.
WL

— Note: This has been corrected in the text. — Editor

This statement by the anonymous small business person is simply false. There is no contradiction between Keynesian countercyclical fiscal policy and wealth transfer. They usually go hand in hand. The assumption seems to be that if fiscal stimulus doesn’t trickle down to small businesses it isn’t Keynesian in nature. Not so. Keynes himself didn’t give a rat’s behind about small businesses. He concerned himself with what he believed to be good for government and society at large as measured by a few simplistic economic aggregate statistics like unemployment rates and GDP. His general attitude toward business was contemptuous and distrustful.

Keynesian policies have been an abject failure since first implemented in the 1930’s and that failure continues to this day for reasons that are too complex to get into in these comments. Keynesian ideologues like Paul Krugman are so desperate to whitewash the policy failures of the 1930’s that they have resorted to the big lie that World War II was actually a gigantic Keynesian stimulus program! Maybe we should bomb Pasadena back to the stone age so that the Feds can rebuild it to stimulate the economy 🙁

“The Glass Stegall Act permitted commercial banks and investment banks to merge.”

This must be an inadvertent misstatement Wayne. As you know the purpose of The Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall) was to create a firewall between commercial and investment banking to enhance stability in the financial sector and help avoid a widespread banking collapse. To my mind this is just more evidence of the colossal failure of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which by itself was supposed to accomplish that along with preventing economic depressions. That’s worked out well hasn’t it!

Sorry to nitpick your otherwise informative article but what can I say, I’m Dyspeptic.

This is a deliberate attempt to disable the engine, pull out all the connections, take a sledgehammer to it, throw acid on it, and then set fire to it. I’m sorry, but after you’ve done all that, do you really think that ANYONE is going to believe you when you say you were actually trying to fix the thing?