Why John Maynard Keynes's Theories Can Fix the World Economy - Businessweek

The big question is whether today's international financial architecture is up to the challenge of restoring balance to global trade and investment. The IMF, to its credit, has pivoted away from the austere prescriptions of the "Washington Consensus" that it championed through the 1990s and toward a more Keynesian perspective. "His thinking is more relevant at the current juncture than it had been in previous troughs of the global economy," says Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, deputy director of the IMF's research department.

But the IMF lacks the authority that Keynes's stillborn international clearing union would have had, and it's perceived in some quarters to be beholden to U.S. interests. Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa are trying to set up an alternative. Germany isn't heeding the IMF much either as it presses France and Italy to take the same austerity medicine as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. "Flash-in-the-pan, short-term stimulus programs" aren't the way to boost growth, German Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Oct. 20 in advance of a joint ministerial meeting in Berlin.