In an effort to rescue some useful meaning from Keynes's famous quip "In   
the long run we are all dead," Nicholas J. Theocarakis first posts a   
text in French which I would not trouble myself to try and read or   
understand.  It's been a rather long time since I took lessons in   
reading French.  (Why wouldn't he translate the text, anyhow?)  
  
Then he cites Keynes's authorship of "The Economic Possibilities for Our   
Grandchildren" as evidence that he must have meant something perhaps   
more profound than the misleading nature of the words in the context in   
which Keynes (1923, 88) wrote them.  Well, I have found that Keynes is   
quite capable of saying inconsistent things at different times.  For   
example, regarding the operation of his expenditure multiplier effect,   
Keynes claims that "the logical theory of the multiplier ... holds good   
continuously, *without time-lag,* at all moments of time" (1936, 122).    
This drew criticisms from his contemporaries.  Yet, he also writes that   
time is required for the "full effect" of the multiplier to be realized   
on employment and output (ibid., 122-5).  Keynes also could, in effect,   
disown his young followers for circulating "modernist stuff, gone wrong   
and turned sour and silly" as well as to declare: "I am not a Keynesian"   
(Hutchison 1981, 122, 123).  I think Nicholas should have gone to the   
text, "A Tract on Monetary Reform," in order to determine whether or not   
it is true that Keynes was criticizing, quite incorrectly, classical   
monetary analysis as not having provided explanations for the short   
run.  If historians of economic thought wouldn't go back to the original   
texts to examine textual issues in dispute, I wonder who else would?  
  
Nicholas also writes: "Equally, James Ahiakpor's comment that   
'increasing the rate of money creation may lower interest rates and   
increase real output and employment in the short term' reflects his   
[Keynes's] own views, but Keynes proposed a completely different   
mechanism for determining the level of the interest rate. His QJE 1937   
article on GT makes that quite clear."  True, Keynes had the vision of   
having the monetary authorities increase the quantity of money   
("liquidity" or cash) so much so that the rate of interest might be   
reduced to zero.  No point in holding society hostage to the need to pay   
the rentier class positive interest rates!  He thought the classical   
argument that interest rates soon would rise, and not stay down,   
following the rise of prices was relevant only in the long run and in a   
situation of full employment.  But he was deadly wrong.  Countries in   
which their central banks have tried to reduce interest rates   
permanently with increased money (currency) creation have found out the   
hard way the classic truth.  It doesn't work that way.  Keynes (1936,   
190-1) doubted  that explanation from Ricardo's Principles.  He might   
have found confirmation from J.S. Mill as well: "... in this case   
increase of currency really affects the rate of interest, but in the   
contrary way to that which is generally supposed; by raising, not by   
lowering it ... We thus see that depreciation, merely as such, while in   
process of taking place, tends to raise the rate of interest: and the   
expectation of further depreciation adds to this effect ..." (Works, 3:   
656).  
  
James Ahiakpor