All of which is fine, if you are prepared to overlook a mass of contrary evidence. In Keynes: The Return of the Master (Allen Lane, 2009), Robert Skidelsky turns out to be far more Keynesian (in the interventionist, fiscalist sense) than he was in his justly celebrated biography of Keynes, published in three volumes between 1983 and 2001. One argument of the latest book, and especially of its chapter on "The Keynesian revolution: success or failure", is that the leading industrial economies performed better in the 30 Keynesian years from 1945 than in the following 30 post-Keynesian years when monetary policy was revived to combat inflation. He also blames the current Great Recession largely on New Classical Economics, and the related notions of "rational expectations", real business cycle theory and the efficient markets hypothesis, which are associated with today's University of Chicago. "To the non-economist [the premises of New Classical Economics] will seem mad; but they are the only way most economists nowadays know how to do economics." 

But The Return of the Master is too glib. For example, chapter five simplifies to the point of caricature. Skidelsky acknowledged in a subtle and worthwhile discussion in the biography (chapter 16 of the second volume) that Keynes's influence on macroeconomic thinking in Germany and France was minimal. But until 1975 their economic performance was better than that of both Britain and the US, where Keynes had a big impact. 

Skidelsky draws blood in his assault on New Classical Economics. Taken to its logical extreme, New Classical Economics proposes that, because people are so smart they will anticipate anything policy makers can do for them, policy makers shouldn't try. Skidelsky is right to attack this sort of nonsense. Keynes's writings support his attack, since they emphasise uncertainty and risk and the power of policy to alter macroeconomic outcomes. Skidelsky also wrongly overlooks the monetary dimension of the current crisis. The main cause of the drastic cyclical upheaval through which the world economy is now passing, as of the Great Depression between 1929 and 1933, and of the UK's boom-bust cycles in the 1970s and 1980s, is a large fluctuation in the rate of money growth. It is the first of the two theories in the General Theory, not the overblown and over-politicised second theory (of multipliers, fiscalism and the rest), that speaks with most relevance to today's policy makers. Skidelsky has moved away from Keynes and closer to the Keynesians since completing his biography. Like them, he has underestimated the importance, robustness and topicality of his hero's contributions to monetary policy and banking thought.