The Moral Duty of France

Keynesianism is considered an intellectual blight, its followers viewed as members of a sect seeking the confiscation of property by a necessarily sprawling State. This is a regrettable stance because there was a time when society accepted state intervention to regulate the fundamentals—and often the excesses—of economic actors. Do we prefer to sacrifice our lives and those of the most vulnerable to the cold brutality of financial markets, which, teetering on the edge like during previous crises, convert to Keynesianism, call on the powers, and public funds to save them, then view them with horror and disdain as soon as they no longer need them?

Our societies have reached such a degree of decadence that they now delegate to the financial sector their most basic duties toward citizens in distress. For example, Goldman Sachs has invested several million dollars in prisons in the State of New York, with the following prospects: to recoup its investment if recidivism drops by 10%, to double it if this rate improves, to lose half of its investment if crime does not improve in New York!

Yet, nearly all economists, the press, and European leaders remain convinced that Keynesianism is a form of collectivism.

Have your politicians explained to you that monetary policy (i.e., the Central Bank) and fiscal/budgetary policy are both factors in stabilizing the economy? Do they even know this…?

In all circumstances, the goal of neo-Keynesians is to reduce risks and maintain confidence:

• without questioning the structure of the economic and social edifice,
• without confiscatory redistribution,
• without over-regulation.

But by using the lever of the Central Bank’s interest rates, raising them to slow down the economy to avoid overheating, and vice versa. The central bank, with its monetary policy, allows recessions to be curbed and precisely avoids excessive state involvement.

Neo-Keynesianism is an alternative to a State that would be forced to exert an invasive grip on the economy. It allows an indebted State to breathe, waiting for its Central Bank to revive the economy through its monetary policy, which can work wonders. Those who doubt it only need to look at the activism of the US Federal Reserve, to which the country’s economy owes a substantial part of its dynamism.

France should not succumb to the obsession, often the blackmail, of numbers.

France must tame its public deficits because our rulers have a moral obligation to revive growth, purchasing power, and employment—for good. Our system needs a profound overhaul because we must collectively rethink public action and spending, the role of taxes, and the purpose of money. France has all the assets to convince its European partners to follow a different path.

Is the relief of a wounded population, the fight against precariousness, and the restoration of employment not worth a deficit?

As early as the 1930s, Keynes suggested that states should halt the crisis, grease the wheels, by employing the unemployed to dig holes to bury banknotes… He was not listened to, and the Great Depression was only overcome thanks to World War II.