Critics call it Keynesian economics.
But, as we will see, that is an insult to John Maynard Keynes, the famed British economist of the 1930s. That was vulgar Keynesianism. Another economist wrote an op ed in a conservative newspaper claiming lower interest rates from the Fed could not help the economy because consumers already had too much debt. That focus on consumers and credit was vulgar Keynesianism. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan persuaded journalists to focus on consumer confidence surveys that the Fed s own research shows have no predictive value at all.