Former IMF chief economist and arch-Keynesian Olivier Blanchard – a well-known fount of truly atrocious voodoo-economics ideas, one nuttier than the next. The books in the background of this picture are probably meant to indicate that he’s been properly indoctrinated (they certainly haven’t made him any smarter). We have yet to come across a headline with his name in it that doesn’t cause us to inwardly cringe. Where do they find these people? Well, this one they found in France, inter alia home to luminaries like Marxist economist Thomas Pikkety, a country in which government spending has reached a staggering 58% of GDP, which has become one of the poster children for economic stagnation. It is hard to believe that economists like Turgot, Bastiat or de Molinari also came from France.
