New Monetary Policy and Keynes

The purpose of this paper is to compare new developments on the monetary policy front, or what is known as inflation targeting, with some of Keynes's ideas as propounded in a pamphlet in 1932. A number of the ingredients of the new monetary policy approach can be found in Keynes, especially that of central bank independence. However, new monetary policy is a major policy prescription closely associated with the New Consensus Macroeconomics. The ideas and policy implications of this new consensus, however, are very different from Keynes's ideas on central banking and monetary policy. We explore these propositions in this contribution.