Paul Jorion is an anthropologist and a sociologist. He became known to a wide readership with his book on the crisis of U.S. capitalism: La Crise du capitalisme américain (2007), in which he foresaw the subprime crisis. A columnist for the French daily Le Monde, he also has a blog where he often expresses iconoclastic views. He holds the ‘Stewardship of Finance’ chair at the Free University of Brussels.

How can the economy be rebuilt following the 2007 debacle of a ‘science’ under the control of finance? How can rereading Keynes help us establish the foundations of a new economic thought?
Drawing largely on John Maynard Keynes’s own writings, Paul Jorion reviews the economist’s extraordinary life: a product of Cambridge scholarship, he was also part of the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf’s literary circle. Not only was he an immensely influential economist, he was also a civil servant and an eminent statesman.
What do we learn from Jorion’s thoughtful re-examination of Keynes’ writings? First of all, that Keynes regarded the use of mathematics and statistics in economics with healthy scepticism. We also learn that Keynes was an early critic of capitalism and its ravages, and of the pseudo-rationality of economics which he viewed as destructive of the social order. Going back to Keynes’s works to reconstruct his ideas means acknowledging that there can never be a purely economic solution to social problems, and that economics should continue being political economics, as it was until the end of the 19th century.
By pointing out the revolutionary aspects as well as the grey areas in the work of this prolific writer, Paul Jorion has restored the most stimulating and relevant aspects of Keynes’s thought for our times.

• In Keynes’s company, Paul Jorion urges us to examine such economic issues as State intervention, the setting of interest rates, the benefits of fiscal policy, currency, unemployment.
• While remaining close to Keynes’s ideas, Jorion gives us an original reflection on his work for our times.