"Harvard professor apologizes for remarks on economist" by Gal Tziperman Lotan and Jeremy C. Fox | Globe Correspondents, May 04, 2013
Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor, sought to defuse a controversy Saturday when he apologized for telling an investors’ conference that the policies of influential economist John Maynard Keynes were short-sighted because Keynes was gay and had no children....
He made the remarks about Keynes at the Altegris Strategic Investment Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., on Thursday....
Financial journalist Thomas Kostigen said, “I just wonder how does somebody’s brain go there . . . especially a smart guy like him.”
Kostigen witnessed Ferguson’s remarks and wrote about them in a blog post for the Financial Advisor.
Speaking by phone on Saturday, Kostigen said Ferguson called Keynes “effete.” He also said that Keynes was married to a ballerina and instead of procreating, the couple probably discussed poetry, according to Kostigen.
“As I tried to lift my jaw up off the table, I didn’t have time to ask any follow-ups,” Kostigen said. He said no one in the room questioned the statements, but he felt there was an awkwardness afterward....
Thursday’s remarks were not Ferguson’s first comments on Keynes’s sexuality. In his 1999 book “The Pity of War,” Ferguson wrote that World War I “made Keynes deeply unhappy. Even his sex life went into a decline, perhaps because the boys he liked to pick up in London all joined up.”
Keynes, who lived from 1883 to 1946, was perhaps the most influential economist of the 20th century and the founder of Keynesian economics, a theory that says, in part, that government intervention can help kick-start lagging economies.
I used to believe that theory, was schooled to believe that theory, and now find it is just another lie to shovel money upwards.
Harvard spokesman Kevin Galvin declined to comment on Ferguson’s statements. Attempts Saturday to reach the chairman of Harvard’s History Department and representatives of the Harvard Queer Students and Allies were unsuccessful.
Jeffrey Gundlach, founder of the investment firm Doubleline Capital, said he heard the exchange and “wasn’t offended by it in any way.” It made him think back to how his views changed when his first child was born.
“I thought it was informative and actually sort of insightful,” he said....
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Related: Harvard’s Niall Ferguson offers cheap shots about Keynes
