I agree with Mason re the usefulness of James Ahiakpor's citation of economists who, before and during the early 1930s, had championed counter-cyclical fiscal policy (though they did not always stress the importance of the nature of the financing). And I agree with Mason that nothing in my earlier post ought to have been taken by James as indicating that I was suggesting that Currie was unique in his noting it. 
 
In fact Currie was rather Hawtreyan in his belief that monetary policy alone could have prevented the downward spiral that occurred after 1929. By late 1930, however, he realised (just as did Hawtrey soon after) that things had gotten so bad that monetary policy alone could no longer do the trick, and that a heavy dose of deficit spending was called for to get new and existing money into circulation to boost effective demand toward the full employment potential supply. 
 
Incidentally, one other name James could have mentioned in support of "timing government spending so as to go contrary to the general movement" was Allyn Young, Currie's great Harvard mentor. See his LSE lectures, 1927-29, as taken down by Nicholas Kaldor (published in Mehrling & Sandilands, _Selected Papers of Allyn Abbott Young_ Routledge, 1999). However, Young (like Currie) put most faith in "the modern idea that if the supply of credit  is properly regulated, there need be no expansion to crisis extent" (ibid., p.84). [Young defined "credit" as currency plus demand deposits, and was a critic of Edwin Cannan for focussing only on currency, and would no doubt equally fault James on this score.]
 
As an adviser to Benjamin Strong (whose untimely death in October 1928, like Young's in March 1929, robbed America of their wisdom at a critical time), Young was very conscious of the importance of maintaining the monetary circulation. The last article he wrote (March 1929) was on the deflationary dangers of gold hoarding by central banks.  
 
But James tells us that "It seems to me that much too much is made of Lachlin [sic] Currie's contributions to knowledge of the efficacy of counter-cyclical fiscal policy than the evidence warrants." He adds, plaintively but with rather overweening self-belief, that he is "yet to succeed in publishing [his] correction of that view of him." Maybe James will first read chapter 12 of David Laidler's _Fabricating the Keynesian Revolution_ for an account of Currie's considerable contributions to the literature on monetary and fiscal theory and policy, or chapters 2 and 3 of my 1990 biography.

One correction to Mason's post, however: Lloyd Mints, who lived to a hundred and was born in 1887, fifteen years before Currie's birth in 1902, was not one of Currie's Harvard students. I only suggested that his later writing (in 1945 and 1946) on what he called the real-bills doctrine and on the causes of the depression was apparently much influenced by Currie though, like Friedman & Schwartz (1963), he did not acknowledge Currie's priority. (See also Laidler, "Hawtrey, Harvard and the Origins of the Chicago School", JPE Dec 1993 on Currie and Young; and Laidler 1999, pp.233ff..)

Roger Sandilands