I was going to write a retrospective on Ben Bernanke this week, since his tenure as Federal Reserve chairman ends soon, and it’s time to look back on his period in office – as he himself did on his predecessors during the Great Depression. But a far more important departure occurred last week: the Italian economist Professor Augusto Graziani died at the age of 80.
Augusto who, you may ask? Graziani’s name is not widely known even among economists, let alone the general public, because he was outside the neoclassical mainstream – and also outside continental America, which has a pseudo-monopoly on fame in economics these days. His Wikipedia entry emphasises his current obscurity: it is a mere stub.
But within the post-Keynesian community, and especially within its European branch, Graziani was a giant. He deserves to be much better known, and I hope that history is far more thorough in its praise of him than the contemporary world has been, where the chatter of neoclassical economists like Bernanke drowns out the wisdom of true sages like Graziani.
