Keynes on British industrial history
I will leave aside Felix Salmon calling me “socially useless” (as a short seller) until I am in a position to reveal my pithy reply. For the moment all I will confess to socially awkward and highly indulgent.
In the highly indulgent vein I have just finished reading Tony Judt’s truly stunning history of Postwar Europe.* Anyway – I thought I would leave you from a quote from Keynes – made at the end of the (Second World) War.
If by some sad geographical slip the American Air Force (it is too late now to hope for much from the enemy) were to destroy every factory on the North East coast and in Lancashire (at an hour when the directors were sitting there and no-one else) we should have nothing to fear. How else are we to regain the exuberant inexperience which is necessary, it seems for success, I cannot surmise.
For the US Air Force read the policies of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and – we can hope – the ensuing discrediting of all financial management.
John
*This improves dramatically on the last bit of Mark Mazower’s equally stunning modern history.