How the Ideas of an Academic Economist, Friedrich A. Hayek, Led to the Thatcher Revolution in Great Britain, Inspired the Reagan Revolution in the United States, and Pushed the World's Global Economy into Its Worst Crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s

In one of the most influential of all economics books, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) wrote: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” “Defunct” might be too strong a word here. Because while Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992) is certainly defunct, meaning “dead,” he is far from defunct, meaning “finished.” Indeed, when George W. Bush became the U.S. president in 2000, the ideas of this Austrian-born economist became exceedingly influential, so much so that they nearly caused the Free World economy to collapse into another Great Depression.