Keynes ... to be fair, he recommended counter-cyclical policy, not deficit spending bubble pumping that has been enacted in his name since.
The intractible problem with Keynes is that you can never tell when the cycle begins and ends until after it has happened. At any instant, you don't know how much of the growth is the underlying steady growth, and how much is illusory cyclical growth.Gordon Brown made a big noise about balancing the budget "over the economic cycle", but in the later years of the credit-induced boom he was already increasing the government deficit because he thought those were the leaner years of the cycle, when actually they turned out to be the fattest. Almost no-one (and certainly no Keynsians) challenged him at the time.
There are always innumerous cycles/waves of different magnitude playing out simultaneously. However, when the central banks start playing with near-zero percent interest rates, they are up to some artificial inflationary policy, they are priming the economy, and they know it. Central banks target core price inflation and have a very good idea of market growth.
Alan Greenspan inflated the economy in the 90's and the policy was continued in the 00's (and Clinton made similar noise). Just because few complained does not in anyway suggest that it was John Maynard Keynes policy. Remember, the time period was referred to as the "New Economy".
Billions of people label themselves Liberal, Conservative, Intelligent, Beautiful, and Clever, but let us not presume that they are.
