Hey Pitchfork listeners, Goldie here. We spend a lot of time on the podcast talking about

neoliberalism, where it went wrong, how it started, and one of the common

narratives is that it arose in the 1970s as a response to the failure of Keynesianism to deal with stagflation, the era in which we had double-digit unemployment and double-digit inflation at the same time.

But that raises the question, what is Keynesianism?

And who is John Maynard Keynes?

Well, Keynes was without a doubt the most influential economist of the first three quarters of the 20th century.

It was his ideas that guided the policies of the New Deal and that essentially defined American

liberalism in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and into the 70s.

And while many neoliberal economists continue to try to discredit Keynes, it turns out many of his ideas are as relevant today as they ever were.

Well recently I had the pleasure of reading the new book

The Price of Peace, Money, Democracy, and Life of John Maynard Keynes and of course

one of the great benefits of hosting a podcast is that I also get to talk to the author

Zach Carter.

I'm Zack Carter. I am the author of The Price of Peace, Money Democracy and the life of John Maynard Keynes, and I am a senior reporter at Huffpost.

I have to admit I had to put down your book about three quarters of the way through and pause for a couple days.

When you started to get into the rise of neoliberalism and how McCarthyism went after

the Keynesian economists.

And I think all of this is relevant to what's going on today.

But that brings me to my, I guess my first question,

what is it that most Americans get wrong about Keynesianism?

It's a big question, and I think unfortunately the answer is almost everything.

Keynes is somebody who most of us encounter in an Econ 101 course, at least that's the way I did.

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