Supporters of a massive regulatory state are often the same people who lament the ubiquity of big corporate chains—what you might call the Gap-ification of America. I’ve written a bit about this before, but what they don’t seem to realize is that not only are big corporations more likely than smaller businesses to be able to afford to comply with new regulations, they’re well aware of this fact, and so they’re often the ones pushing the regulations behind the scenes.

Asset prices pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. As houses become more valuable, house owners feel richer. If they then spend more, companies make more money, which in turn increases the value of shares and bonds. Profitable companies invest and create jobs. As the economy thrives, there are fewer defaults. Lenders are therefore willing to lend more on easier terms. This extra credit makes asset markets liquid: if ever you need to sell something, there always seems to be a ready buyer. Ample credit also tends to feed into spending and asset prices. That makes people feel richer. And so it goes on.

The one constant was Keynes’ faith in the elite. He generally believed that almost any problem could be solved by getting together young men who had been schooled at Cambridge and asking them to take over. He even wanted Cambridge men to run America, because he didn’t think anyone in the U.S. was smart enough. He also didn’t like Jews, the French or the working class. Keynes wrote that these Cambridge-led government boards should do everything from running individual companies to determining how many babies should be born and, cryptically, of what quality. Keynes was, after all, on the board of directors of the British Eugenics Society.