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They believe governments should never do anything to counteract economic downturns.

'Too big to fail' is a socialist construct. Too big to fail also means, too small to succeed. Failure is a necessary restraint. It removes imprudent risk-takers from the equation and allows for innovators to take those places at the table of commerce.

Anti-Keynesians, like myself, believe that the government attempts to centrally plan the economy are the CAUSE of economic downturns. For example, Greenspan's free money, on top of government guarantees for loans, are a catalyst to the bubble that just burst. Bernanke's helicopter ride isn't planning the next economic great period, but reacting to the failures of the last attempts to manipulate the money supply. The next new and great attempt to manipulate the money supply will be a reaction to the helicopter ride. And so it goes.

We aren't acting, we're reacting. We aren't riding the wave, we're chasing our tails. This is the history of central planning. It is always a failure, whether we are discussing the number of peanuts produced and distributed each year, or, the number of dollars.

I will agree that Keynes did subscribe to using better economic times to take gov't spending off the table and a true picture of Keyne's philosophy would provide more balance in the overall equation. However, that is NOT what is traditionally considered to be Keynesian economics, today. Washington loves Keynesian economics because it prescribes more gov't spending as the cure for bad times, good times, even hangnails. It's easy to see why Washington loves a theory of money that involves its own reckless spending.

It's also easy to see how central planning is the problem and more of it isn't the solution. That's true no matter what the central planners target: health care, salaries, stimulus packages, or the number of dollars in the current money supply.

Friedman advocated the k-percent rule. Set monetary growth as a "k" percent of GDP (3-5%), and then leave it alone. The free market will consistently behave with a consistent government policy to not interfere with it. More government interference isn't the solution; it's the problem.

To directly rebut the assertion made, while Keynes, in theory, isn't as bad as his ideas are IN PRACTICE, the man was anything BUT a conservative. He was a central planner and believed that the smartest boys in the room could make government control work. It's only been a failure every time it's tried because they haven't tried it, yet.