6 DECEMBER 2008, Page 28

Sir: Your new economics correspondent Nancy Dell’Olio might like to

consider another economist, Kondratieff, who postulated an 80-year cycle in economic events: 1929 marked the end of a decade noted for bright young things, financial excess, limitless confidence, loose morals, alcohol and cocaine. If that rings any sort of bell, consider the ten years that followed, with poverty, authoritarianism and, ultimately, war. Our present problems will not be solved by ill-conceived gestures, any more than were those of 1929. And Keynes, before he died, was no longer a Keynesian, if he ever was.

Sir John Sparrow

Padbury, Buckinghamshire