“These days, you constantly see articles that make it seem as if there was a great debate in the 1930s between Keynes and Hayek, and that this debate has continued through the generations. As Warsh says, nothing like this happened. Hayek essentially made a fool of himself early in the Great Depression, and his ideas vanished from the professional discussion.

So why is his name invoked so much now? Because The Road to Serfdom struck a political chord with the American right, which adopted Hayek as a sort of mascot — and retroactively inflated his role as an economic thinker. Warsh is even crueler about this than I would have been; he compares Hayek (or rather the “Hayek” invented by his admirers) to Rosie Ruiz, who claimed to have won the marathon, but actually took the subway to the finish line.” –Paul Krugman

Milton Friedman would probably be a better choice for the right-wing equivalent of Keynes, but he more-or-less added on to Keynes rather than completely opposed him (“In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian”). But now that the far right is embracing economic policies that are over 40 years old, they have to go further back and find someone who completely opposed him.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc&feature=relmfu[/youtube]