[OPE] Two queries, from a friend

Dear OPE-L folks,

An acquaintance writes to me with two questions (which I of course can't
answer; at least the first one). I thought I might ask the intrepid
scholars of OPE whether they have any information/insights on these that
I might share.

David

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I pose to you two questions that, I am sure, will require no more than
five minutes to answer. (Of course, I will completely understand if
this is asking too much of your busy day.)
     (1) On p. 21 of /Crisis Economics (2010)/, authors Nouriel Roubini
and Stephen Mihm state that one of Marx's prominent British
contemporaries, Walter Bagehot, argued in an 1873 book ". . . that a
central bank should act as a lender of last resort when a panic and bank
run occurs [/sic/] . . . ." Question: Given Marx's encyclopedic
awareness of all things politico-economic, did he ever respond to such
as Bagehot's claim, which claim amounts to a proto-Keynesian rebuttal to
at least the financial side of Marx's crisis theory?
     (2) Many years ago I read Paul Mattick's efforts to provide a
Marxian response to Keynesianism. Balancing this against Paul Sweezy's
neo-Marxian vindication (/Monopoly Capital/) of Keynesian remedies, I
concluded that the debate was a draw. (I think that the early Sweezy of
/The Theory of Capitalist Development/ [1942]--a text riddled with
errors, by the way, for those acquainted with the relevant
mathematics--made a good point, which he subsequently dropped, in
arguing that any effective Keynesianism would require tutelage by a
working-class state.) Question: Has anybody since Mattick, Marxist or
non-Marxist, provided an improvement over Mattick's counter to
Keynesianism?
     The massive Japanese experiment with Quantitative Easing over the
past twenty years affords a laboratory for study of the issue, but I am
not aware of any serious work that is neither apologetic nor a
recitation of conventional Austrian or Keynesian critiques.
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Received on Thu Jan 27 11:54:37 2011