In an interview on Crashes

OK, let’s talk about Skidelsky’s book on Keynes.

What’s so wonderful about Keynes was that he didn’t trust economics. He understood that this was a human study, that it was not a scientific or mathematical study. He didn’t trust economic data – he said it’s useful, but it doesn’t really tell you what’s going on. He didn’t trust mathematical models – he said they’re very helpful when you try to think through what’s going on, but don’t think it’s the truth because it’s not. What comes through that book is what a deep thinker Keynes was and that he basically understood that economics is a metaphor for complex, semi-random, not very rational human interaction. And you read it and you think: ‘Gee, if we only had Keynes.’

Isn’t this book three huge volumes?

Skidelsky does a one-volume version as well as the three-volume version. I’ve read them both and the one-volume version is really fine. It’s 900 pages, a wonderful read, with lots of beautiful luscious history in it – Cambridge in 1912 when there was that brief period prior to World War I when Cambridge may have been the very best place in the world that you could be if you were smart and had taste.