During the last quarter of the 20th Century, the conventional wisdom prevailing in academic, political and financial circles was definitely against government deficits. At the turn of the century, however, a substantial recourse to deficit spending practices in the United States reopened the...

This paper argues that Thomas Tooke's (1773--1858) most important legacy to economics is not his conception of "endogenous money", however important, but is instead his original proposition that the long-run "average" rate of interest entered into the normal cost of production and, therefore,...