ABSTRACT
I was prompted to write this chapter for two reasons. First, although I am an admirer of the works of John Maynard Keynes and of many modern postKeynesians, I have long had nagging doubts about Keynes’s emphatic claim to build a general theory. Second, in September 1999, Victoria Chick gave an excellent talk at the University of Hertfordshire on the evolution of financial institutions and their relevance for monetary theory and policy. This presentation was based on her important but unduly neglected paper on the same theme (Chick 1986). Vicky’s outstanding talk (delivered amazingly without any use of notes or prompts) helped me develop my ideas on the difficulty that I had perceived within the Keynesian tradition. The purpose of this chapter is to outline this problem.1
