Economic Epistle number 1.

To fellow economists and interested.

You might wonder who I am, or why I write this and to clear your mind a bit I will answer more than you expect:

My name is Maximus and my age is 98. I was born November eleventh of 1918, yes, the day the First World War was declared as a victory for those who were called the allies. I was born in a city known by many, the big apple, New York, USA.

I am soon to become one hundred years old and I believe it is an honor to share my experience, knowledge and memories to my fellow economists and to those who are interested the economy after the First World War, I am proud to say I have lived to tell the world what the battle for the world economy was like, and let me tell you it was a battle between two near friends, a battle with no arms but knowledge, ideas and theories: both searching for a better economy, for a better way of seeing the world, governments, societies   and the market its self.

Normally I would give for granted so many things you should know, yet due to the purposes of my writing its self I can’t permit any unknown detail or you might misunderstand the whole point of my script; therefore we might as well take a trip back in time to the 1920’s, the Roaring Twenties were astonishing, many countries specially the United States experienced a great economic prosperity, due to that undeniable fact, my family, as so many other families, decided to spare their money into actions of companies they gave for granted would  give a big economic retribution, yet, this wasn’t exactly what happened.

In 1929, at the age of eleven I met The Wall Street Crash, on October twenty-ninth of 1929 United States succumbs to a financial bankruptcy that not only affects all the industry of the country but also various economic sectors and numerous banks. Not much time was needed for my family to also be unemployed, we went through hunger, we didn’t expect the financial bankruptcy, we weren’t ready and we lost it all just like so many other people and families did.

Though my country and my people suffered very much because of the financial crisis we were going through, we weren’t the only ones, by the time, our country had such a heavy weight in the world that our crisis went beyond our frontiers and affected the whole occidental industrialized world. Somehow our market no longer had the forces we gave for granted, no longer were the market forces enough to restore financial and economic balance.

A few years later a group of economists became all of a sudden very important to the economic world, they exposed that the old dominant precepts had to be left a side and that new ways had to be introduced into the economic world. In 1937 one of my teachers brought “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”, a book written by John Keynes to class, at the time it was the very first time I heard about this brilliant economist, my friend and teacher John Maynard Keynes, he thought everything I know, John was a great critique to the classic and neoclassic theories of economy, John was not only a critique to the classic theory but he also exposed his way of economy, how a country could overcome an economic and financial bankrupt but also introduced the theoretical justification for the interventionist policies.

The first time a read Keynes, I saw a whole new perspective of the capitalist economy I knew till that day, he recommended and introduced into the theory a strong state intervention in the markets for the countries and the economies to outstrip the crisis they were going through, not only did he introduce this perspective, but he also took a look at the unemployment that had confronted the society for quite some years, he recognized neoclassic unemployment facts, but he also added a new one and so he considered  that unemployment caused unwittingly existed and it was caused by insufficient effective demand.

For the moment I can only the first time I read Keynes, well let me tell you it wasn’t easy to understand his standpoint, but he gave me a whole new perspective of the economy compared to the one I knew until that moment and let affirm it has been a wonderful voyage seeing economy through Keynes’s mind, if I can say so…

23/08/2016 , to be continued…
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