The results were immediate and dramatic. Countries as diverse as Brazil, China, and the United States lined up to stimulate their economies and stymie the contraction of economic activity. China led with a whopping 13 percent of GDP; Spain promised 7 percent; and the United States committed around 5.5 percent of GDP. Even Germany stimulated to the tune of just under 3 percent of GDP. Whether this money was actually spent was another matter entirely, but that it was promised for its intended purpose was significant. As Keynes’s biographer Lord Skidelsky put it in a book celebrating the 2009 rediscovery of Keynes, we had witnessed “the Return of the Master.” The only problem was that by the time the master returned, some very important folks had already left the building: the Germans, followed by the British and the Canadians. The global return of Keynes was to last only a year from start to finish.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 160