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Employing different meanings of classical concepts of saving, capital, investment, and money, and incorrectly attributing the assumption of full employment of labor and a world of certainty to classical analysis, John Maynard Keynes ([1936] 1974) faulted Say's Law as irrelevant to the real world. Roy Grieve (2016) ignores previous clarifications of Keynes's misrepresentations and misunderstandings of John Stuart Mill's restatements of the law. He employs similar misrepresentations and misunderstandings of Mill's explanations as Keynes did. His model of Mill's analysis is incapable of explaining how variations in relative prices, the value of money, and interest rates coordinate production, consumption, and savings decisions in a monetary economy.

Both the 1932 Harvard and Chicago recommendations for dealing with the Great Depression include vigorous open market purchases by the Fed; federal government deficit spending, including public works, financed by new money creation; reduction in tariffs; and the cancellation of inter-allied debts. The similarities are no coincidence, since both documents draw mostly from well-known classical and early neoclassical monetary analysis and free trade principles, and partially from Keynes's pre-1936 work. The classical principles are embodied in then-familiar texts by John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, and Frank Taussig. Memoranda typically do not spell out their theoretical sources.

AbstractLarry Moss lived a busy life as an academic, a professor, an attorney, a journal editor, and a skilled magician. He was a prolific publisher of scholarly articles and books, and an editor of scholarly volumes. With friendly charm and humor, he sought to encourage others in their scholarly pursuits. He employed his magical skills to enliven his courses and to illustrate certain economic phenomena. Larry served the History of Economics Society in important capacities, including its presidency. He sought "methodological tolerance" and interacted with scholars of different philosophical persuasions. He organized memorials for numerous other economists; it thus is fitting that we do so here for him.

Argues that Hernando de Soto's explanation for poverty in Third World countries in, The Mystery of Capital (2000), is a misdiagnosis. His assertion that the inability of poor people to convert their "dead capital" into "live, functioning capital," is based on a misconception of "capital" & its sources. It is argued that the real problem is the inadequacy of domestic savings to finance investment rather than the lack of titles to property. Poor people in Third World countries do not have the assets to borrow funds for investment; therefore, de Soto's solution of a huge titling program represents a "wasteful diversion" from the need to promote economic prosperity. Issues discussed include confusion over the meaning of "capital;" de Soto's use of the term "dead capital;" & the limited role of property titles. Other claims made by de Soto that are factually incorrect or self-contradictory are pointed out along with the importance of correctly diagnosing the causes of poverty in Third World countries in order to enact effective policy. Tables, References. J. Lindroth